by Kluge, P. F.
“I understand,” I said, cursing myself. If not now, when? If not me … who? Somewhere over in Basking Ridge I heard Gooker laughing at me. You idiot, he shouted. Go for it! What’s your strategy George? Wait another twenty years and tackle her in the old folks home? Unwrap those ace bandages and party on down? Go for it!
“It seems tacky.” Case closed. She reached for the door, opened it, stepped outside and walked around the front of the car.
“Open the door,” she said, when she reached my side. I obeyed. I started to move.
“No,” she said. “Don’t get out.” With that, she leaned down and moved in towards me and her lips were on mine, lingering, not like the chaste pecks—kiss offs—I remembered. Our mouths opened.
“So … good night.”
“Good night, Joan.” I flipped on the headlights, turned the key, found reverse and started backing away.
“George?” she called out.
“Yes?”
“You’re still a good kid.”
I nodded and wondered what she’d meant by that, all the way home. Then I pulled into the driveway, that crunch of gravel, so familiar, signaling safe return, journey over, not getting laid again. “You’re still a good kid.” Walking across the grass—dew soaking my shoes and socks—I found my way into the zone of ghosts, the picnic table, home of uncles with suspenders and beer steins, sweaty, smothering tantes. The grass underneath the table was still tentative, after all these years, rutted from where they put their feet while they sat and ate.
IX.
I HAD TO GET UP LAST NIGHT AND GET A blanket. My old bones can tell: autumn just around the corner. Herbst, in German. Autumn sounds better, fall better still. I have to admit it. German is damn awkward. I could start a list. There’s this little insect that flits around flowers in summertime. Now in English, they call it a butterfly. That’s cute. You picture yellow wings and pure food and dairy cows munching through green pastures. The French call it papillon and that’s nice too: lacy, fragile wings catching every little breeze. So what do Germans come up with? We call it a schmetterling! Can you believe it! Schmetterling. Like a combination of Schmeling, heavyweight boxer and Messerschmitt, World War II fighter plane. The German language turns a butterfly into something that you’d expect to drop out of a cloud bank and strafe a column of refugees.
Schmetterling. Schnitzelbank. Schmeling. My brother’s friend and hero. They shared fights together, Young Stribling, Steve Hamas, Mickey Walker, Max Baer, Jack Sharkey, Paulino Uzcudun, Joe Louis. That’s a lot of fights. And one more after that, a humdinger! World War II. I never thought so much about my brother as I did during the war, when I worked hard on the tanks that might kill him. The cannon, the machine gun mounts and—what made me shudder—the treads that might flatten his body. And oh, those pictures they loved printing. Dead Germans, dangling out of charred tanks in Africa, frozen solid in Russian winter. How could he not be among them, dying while the world cheered? Dying in newspapers, newsreels, comic strips and movies. And then, those incredible columns of prisoners marched away from Stalingrad, long dark columns like skid marks on the snow, off into white nothingness. Dying. Like Max Schmeling was supposed to have died. Back in 1942, Max was in the paratroopers. Somewhere in the Mediterranean … was it Crete? … he made a jump. And a report surfaced that he’d been killed in battle and there was a cartoon that showed him with his hand raised in a boxing ring and next to that, in uniform, on the ground, bleeding. That was what was supposed to happen to him. And to my brother.
I wrote Max Schmeling after the war. I asked Max Schmeling, did he know what happened to his old friend Heinz Greifinger. Schmeling was scuffling around for fights then, the newspapers said, trying a comeback that led no place. I wrote him care of the mayor’s office in Hamburg, one of a million such letters that went around Europe after the war, addressed to bombed out houses and people who were gone forever. Dead letters, alright. But I heard back. Max remembered me. And he’d seen Heinz in 1943, he said, home from the Russian front—good news—wounded, but lightly—good news—and headed back. Bad news. The worst.
Anyway, autumn. All my life, I’ve tried imagining if my life were a single year, what season am I in. When I was thirty, was that summer? When I was fifty, was that autumn? Now, no doubt about it, I’m in winter, killing frosts behind me, ground hard-packed. And you know what else I wonder? Take a piece of the time remaining, a week say, and ask yourself how much of your life that’s left that week is. A tenth? A half? But there’s a problem with these guessing games, because you assume you’ll have a full year, you can count on getting to see all the seasons roll. It doesn’t work that way. Take my wife. Cancer didn’t wait for winter.
X.
“GOOD MORNING, POP.” I FOUND HIM IN THE CELLAR, wrapping newspapers. We’d been through this before: the Boy Scouts were too lazy to come in the house and tie things up anymore. They stuck a notice under the door, announcing the truck would go up and down the street and after that it was up to you.
“It’s afternoon,” he said. “Lend me your finger, will you, George.” I placed a finger on the string, holding it tight while he tied a knot. He was wiry and deft. He was still strong.
“Now the magazines.” A pile of Consumer Reports, U.S. News, Travel and Leisures. Not the National Geographics: he still kept them on a shelf, next to the same dark closet where he kept beer, apples, and herring, rollmops he made himself. I wondered why he kept them: to me, they ranked with those rows of Readers’ Digest Condensed books that were the pride of otherwise print-less households. But he held onto them the way he held onto old license plates.
“You used to make wine down here, didn’t you Pop?”
“A time or two. We bought the grapes in south Jersey, an old Italian over in Millville. Applesauce we made too, when you were little.”
“I remember the wine. Whenever you had parties, you gave me a couple glasses, so I’d get sleepy. I remember falling to sleep, like I was in a boat that was rocking, and I’d hear all of you outside singing those German songs.”
“During the war, someone called the cops on us. Figured we were having a Nazi rally or something, like maybe we were toasting some spies who’d just landed off of Sandy Hook. But it was just a beer party. We sang the Horst Wessel song. The International, too. Anything we knew, we sang. Home on the Range …”
“I remember.”
He kneeled beside a pile of old magazines, lifting it up, squaring and smoothing the edges to make an orderly bundle. “They run down these eighty-year-old Latvians or something they say were Nazis. What are they going to do when all the Nazis are dead? The world will be an empty place. The way I see it, they made a mistake at Nuremberg, hanging what was it? Thirteen? They should have stretched it out. Start with the oldest, a trial every four years, like the Olympics. Make it last.”
He stood by his workbench, everything neatly sorted, coffee cans full of nails and screws, hammers, pliers, screwdrivers, files and chisels along the wall. Everything was in order. It got on my nerves, this German thing about control, self-control, the illusion of control. And now this aria on Nazi-hunting. Maybe he was just in a mood.
“Pop …” I stood in front of him. “What did you want to talk about?”
“This house is as old as you are, George, just about. A few years older.”
“It’s a nice house,” I responded. It sounded flat, but I didn’t know what else to say.
“Nice,” he said. “Yup. Only I never thought it would end so quickly. Be over so fast. The thing of it is, I thought a house was different from a car that you wore out or traded in. I thought a house was where your life continued, sort of, after you were gone. That’s not the way it works, is it? Not in this country.”
He leaned towards me, staring hard. A watery stare, though, diluted by old age and old feelings. “Not the way it works in this neighborhood. No sir.”
“Pop,” I pleaded. “What do you want from me? You want me to tell you it’s not Germany, it’s Ameri
ca?”
“I know that.”
“That it’s not the twenties? It’s the eighties?”
“Know that too,” he said, turning away. “I know something else, too. An old saying. Kein Haus, keine Heimat. Know what that means? No house, no homeland.”
“I suppose you’re talking about me.”
“If the shoe fits,” he said, pausing at the bottom of the cellar steps.
“You want me to take the house?”
“I offered.”
“With you in it?”
“Now that you mention it, I’m just wondering. When did it become such an all-of-a-sudden bad idea, parents and kids in the same house? Your generation, George, you guys changed things. You put your kids in day care and your parents in nursing homes. Congratulations, to you. You’re free as a bird. How much do you think I’ll be able to sell this place for?” With that, he turned and headed upstairs. So that was it! He was selling the house! He’d said what he had to say and now he left me in the cellar, as if I needed to be left alone to consider his disclosure. I decided to play along, the way people do when they call for a moment of silence in memory of someone who’s died. You tilt your head down. Maybe you close your eyes. It’s like kissing, that way. Usually you’re wondering what’s for dinner and what are other people thinking and is a moment of silence the same as a minute of silence. But I gave the old man his minute.
I looked around the cellar. Furnace and tool bench, laundry sinks and cool closet, smelling of apples, onions, herring-in-brine. In my mind I traveled upstairs, into the kitchen nook, then the dining room, where they played pinochle, the bedroom where my mother had died, the living room, where on chilly days Pop and I napped on the floor, butts against a radiator. I paused at the mantel, row and row of pictures of somber-faced Germans. Then I went upstairs, a converted attic with two rooms. One was a guest room. For a while it belonged to a grandfather—on Mom’s side or Pop’s, I couldn’t remember. He stayed a few years and then he went back over there. We played a card game on his bed, which was covered by a billowing feather quilt. War, the Americans called that game. Germans called it Auf Leben Und Tot: of life and death. My grandfather. I hadn’t thought about that old man in years. There was something wrong about that. Something was wrong with me. I made my way up the steps and found my old man in the kitchen nook, waiting for me to disappoint him.
“It’s a seller’s market, George,” he said. “You’d better believe it. The place is in good shape and the location … well you know what they say. Or maybe you don’t. But the three most important things in real estate are location, location, and location. And you know something else?” He was piling it on, real estate talk, rubbing it in. “All these offices that are moving out of New York—corporate headquarters, clean industry they call it—they’re making people rich out here. I can name my price and there’s no reason I can’t get it. Everybody else has.”
“I don’t know Pop …” I held up my hands, shook my head, looked around the place, which had been our only place, and our place only, and I realized how I’d gotten used to knowing that he was here, at home. Gooker was right. As long as parents lived at home, the center held. We were still in it together. Once they left, it was all kaput.
“Why keep it?” he asked. “Why save it? Am I saving it for you? Just say the word … say yes.”
There was nothing to say. Was I supposed to argue about family, when I had none? Or about the importance of roots? In the suburbs? Of traditions? In New Jersey?! Should I pretend that I could see myself living in this house?
“I’m selling your home, George. I just told you that. And I take it you’ve got nothing to say.”
“Where will your home be, Pop?”
“Where’s yours?”
“Pop … why are you doing this to me?”
“To you? I’m not doing anything to you. I just wanted you to come out and answer me and you have. Now, I guess you’ll want to be heading back to the city.” He started running water over some plates in the sink. “You’ll want to beat the rush hour traffic.”
“Rush hour traffic goes the other way, Pop.”
“You could sit outside the Holland Tunnel for hours. Or the Lincoln.”
“On Sunday?”
“And I guess you’ve got lots of stuff to do there.”
“Pop, I’m asking you … where are you going?”
“I’ve been asking you the same question for years, George. You tell me.”
“Pop!”
“I asked first.” He stood by the front door, ready to drop me off at Two Guys from Sicily. For years we joked about how unsubtle he could be. When we were visiting somewhere, he’d suddenly get up out of his chair and start pacing, while I rushed dessert and Mom made excuses for him. Some people thought he was restless, some thought he was rude. It’s how he was. Now it was time for me to go. Looking at him, I could see I made him uncomfortable.
“Could we talk about this some more, Pop?”
“Sure we can,” he said. “Sure we can talk. Better yet, write me a letter. You know how much I like getting mail.”
PART THREE
I.
FARAWAY PLACES, BACKYARD ADVENTURES
by George Griffin
What are we to make of the fact that New England’s finest, richest harvest is not of fish or lumber, not of blueberries or maple syrup, but of leaves …
DON’T FORGET THOSE FACTORY OUTLETS, AN INNER VOICE heckled. I’d been re-reading a series of columns I’d started a year before, a series interrupted by an unexpected junket to Antarctica. Now I returned to the unfinished project. The idea was to cover the turning of the leaves, north to south, Maine to Florida. Now I planned to resume. And no one, I was sure, would complain that two autumns had been combined into one. Autumn wasn’t exactly breaking news.
I glanced up from my typewriter, out onto the street. Summer lasted longer in New York. Leaves on sidewalk gingko trees, green as ever, hung limp and listless, pleading for the first frost to put them out of their misery. But it was still warm enough for the Puerto Ricans to brown bag it on the stoop across the way, tossing poptops and bottle caps into the street. And it was still warm enough for traffic to pound the stuff into the pavement, which was as close as anybody would get to the immigrants’ dream of streets paved with gold. Summer in New York. But, like a model forced to wear fur coats in August, I conjured dreams of seasons yet to come.
… and, if only it were possible to position oneself on Maine’s northernmost border, a sentinel against a change in the weather, eyes out for the forest, the tree, the very leaf that would be the first to change. The first, the very first sign of a death and glory beyond counting …
Leaf peepers, they called them, and they came up by the busload from the south, as if to meet the invasion from the north. Autumn in New England was death like it ought to be, full and flaming, every year. That was the rub. Trees were perennial. People were annuals: one growth, one death. Maybe that’s what was bothering the old man.
… a fascinating process, days growing shorter intimations of mortality, photosynthesis—the life process itself—slowly faltering, chlorophyll withdrawing, carotenoids, unleashing oranges, anthocyncnins exploding into blazing reds and lustrous lacquered browns …
The oldest, corniest story in the world, maybe. It reminded me of the essays we wrote in grade school, when we were encouraged to be creative: Mother Nature skipping through a forest wonderland, palette can in one hand, brush in the other, daubing every leaf a different color.
… a blend of summer rains and autumn winds, warm days and cold nights. No death the same, no life identical, each season inevitable and unique …
Could we put this to music? I wondered. What a cliché! I guessed I was drawn to these hackneyed stories, just to see if I could make them work, one more time. Virtuosity and cynicism came together on jobs like this, like a gourmet chef re-inventing meat loaf.
I switched on the television, flipping from channel to channel, MTV, sports
, pornography, news, we’d come a long way from the days when everybody watched the same shows. And there, plain as day, was my old friend, Kenny Hauser, sitting with an Englishman, an Arab, a couple newspapermen, and an Oriental woman moderator, a low-rent Connie Chung. I knew him right away, before his name flashed on the screen. Smart, funny Kenny Hauser, still overweight, still disorganized, a half inch of calf flashing between cuff and socks. I backed to the kitchen, eyes still on the screen and pulled out a beer, not wanting to miss a second. It was odd, I knew it even then. Not miss a second? I’d missed twenty plus years of Kenny. Now, something had hooked me and was reeling me in. I sat on a hassock a yard from the screen. Kenny! Kenny on a local panel show dealing with Israeli settlements on the West Bank, Kenny on the side of the settlers. The show was well along, and the Arab must have mangled his English badly, because everyone disregarded him. But the Englishman was taking up his part, asking Kenny some hard questions.
“Now let me see if I have it straight, Mr. Hauser,” he said, all full of snotty English politeness. “When Hitler takes territory—‘Lebensraum’—from Poles and Czechs and calls it his ‘Drang Nach Osten,’ that’s perfectly deplorable. The world protests. And when American pioneers take land from the Indians and call this process ‘Manifest Destiny’ that, too is deplorable … or, at least, regrettable. Now, when Israel plants its settlements on the conquered West Bank and by way of justification refers to the Old Testament concept of ‘Yretz Ysrael,’ then that is not deplorable, and not regrettable.”
I admit it tickled me to see Kenny put on the spot. And yet, though I had every reason to relish seeing Kenny Hauser nailed by the hard-charging Englishman, I found myself waiting for him to pull off the kind of wacky off-the-wall gambit he used to come up with in student council or debate club or Boys State, the last minute launching of a secret weapon that sometimes shot into orbit, sometimes toppled over at the launching pad, but always made things interesting and fun.