by Kluge, P. F.
“George and I figured it out,” I said. “You should never judge a sunset till it’s dark.”
“Meaning what?”
“Only this. People watch the sun slip under the horizon and they say, well, that’s it, we saw the sunset. Let’s go home and eat. They miss the best of it. The deeper colors. The reflections, not just in the west but all over the sky, if you’re in luck.” We walked around the pond to a culvert and sat down. There were bullfrogs croaking out on the pond and ducks, or silhouettes of ducks, paddling through the lit-up water. Mr. Jacobs patrolled the edge of the lake, finally satisfying himself, and joined us. Cattails, sunken logs, it all got dark now.
“What day of the week is this?” I asked. “Down in Florida, it’s not just the seasons you lose hold of. It’s the day of the week too, unless you watch television a lot.”
“Thursday. Your son’s got a reunion Saturday. So do I.”
“I’ll bet he’s at the house,” I said, wondering if he liked it there. An odd question. It was his home. “I’ve got a problem up the road,” I said. “This master plan of mine just bottomed up. Heinz screwed it up. My big project. Research, travel, the works. I was going to find out what happened to him. There’s veterans outfits all over Germany. I could maybe find some of the men he was with and put the stories together and maybe even go where he went, in the same season, and go where he died, if I could find out. That was the least I could do. Also, the most. My master plan. Only now, up he pops, my long-lost Heinz, up he pops in Florida! So it’s goodbye bierstube and fish market and promenade along the Elbe. And it’s hello, Flamingo good-as-new cars and my choice of tapioca or Jello, if it’s before 6 p.m.”
“He’s alive, Hans. You came out ahead.”
“I know that. But meanwhile I talked George into taking over the house and now …” I stood up, turned in front of her, threw up my arms. “I’m homeless.”
I was piling it on some, I admit. Pauline laughed at me. Mr. Jacobs yawned. I got no sympathy from the one, no respect from the other.
“They don’t take dogs down here, do they?” I asked. “Not many places do.”
“Not as a rule,” she said. “That is, you can’t purchase one after you move in. But if you have one before then, you can bring him along.”
“Is that so?” The silence that followed gave me a chance to think. Which I declined. I just walked with Pauline, back towards the village, through a collection of garden plots that some old-timers had put in at the edge of the woods. Nothing much left in November. Some cabbage leaves and carrots nipped by frost. Almost every garden had a bench or chair, so you could weed and sit, weed and sit. Pauline turned towards me right there, near where the trail meets the road. Ahead of us, Mr. Jacobs stepped onto someone’s yard, lifting his leg against a birdbath and a light snapped on. He looked surprised—no regard for privacy — and I called him back. Pauline was facing me, studying. I had no thoughts of my own, honest, only this feeling of trust that comes to you when you’re very young or kind of old and no time in between, the feeling that you’re in good hands.
Back in Berkeley Heights the next morning, Mr. Jacobs and I explore the property, sit out on the stoop, watching cars go up and down the street and, later, we sit in the living room doing the same thing. George is camped out here. His things are in the bedroom. But he’s not at home right now. And I am. Waiting for company. Waiting for Pauline Kennedy, following me up from Lakehurst.
Even now, she’s probably on the way here, every second is subtracting from the distance between us. I haven’t told George that she’ll be coming or that she’ll be staying the night with me. I can’t live alone. I’ve tried it and I can’t. I need people around. When I retired from Ballantine’s, I swore I’d never go back, the way some old timers do, coming back to see the gang and tell them how great it was, having nothing to do but sleep late. Lying about how much they loved it when you knew they were just sitting around the house driving their wives crazy. Get a hobby, get a hobby, I could picture those women saying, like parrots. When I was gone, I was gone for good. But I missed having someone to argue with about unions and politics and television. I missed the World Series betting pools and having a couple dollars down on boxing matches, even though I made a point of betting against the guy I wanted to win because that way, if my man lost, I’d have some money for consolation, and if he won, I wouldn’t mind paying up. Then Mom died and I got seriously lonely. And I was drawn to this schoolteacher woman who wasn’t lonely. I wondered how she managed that. I saw her a time or two at the library, always asking me about George and me always saying he was making out fine, the way parents do, even if their boy is in prison, until one day after an extra dumb piece about Six Flags over Texas amusement park, she asked and I said, “you really want to know?” After that we talked, we met for coffee, she got me to join a book discussion group. When she was facing retirement, I set her up in Lakehurst, I helped her move in. No hanky-panky either, back then, not even a thought about it. Pauline Kennedy saw that I knew about gardening and hardware stores and lumber yards. I wasn’t helpless. I was Old World stock. So what brought me down to Lakehurst were questions about storm windows and bird feeders and such, then it was sitting around afterwards, going to movies, drives to farms for corn and tomatoes and sometimes blueberries that you pick yourself and it’s so much fun you wind up with twenty pounds of blueberries you don’t know what to do with. It took a while, I’m saying, before I felt comfortable, sitting in her house when work was done. It felt like I needed a reason to be there. Help that I was giving. Or getting. Maybe that’s why I started talking about selling the house and moving back to Germany. I wanted to start something, test something. It’s as though I were saying to Pauline, you think you’re smart, let’s see you talk me out of this one.
The next car that comes down the street, it could be hers. I’m sitting at the window, watching cars, the way George used to wait for company, betting me whether five or ten more cars would pass before our company came. And I’m thinking about Mom. I’m feeling guilty about Mom. You. Who I walked with in Riverside Park. Who, pregnant, steadied the saw horse while I cut the lumber for this house. Who owned this kitchen and fussed over hollyhocks and kept track of miles per gallon on the way to Florida and always made us wait until dark on Christmas Eve before we opened presents. You. Whose ashes I scattered around the hemlocks, you ghost now, looking over my shoulder as I watch for cars down the street. Company’s coming. And you. I’m all full of you, in these last moments alone. I guess this means I don’t believe in heaven. If I were sure I’d be catching up with you in a couple years, or that you’d be waiting up for me some place, this wouldn’t happen. I guess this means I loved you. Love you. Will love you. How am I supposed to put it? And could I just say I’m sorry I didn’t say it more often, while you were still around to hear it? I’m sorry I didn’t spend more money on vacations. I was too damn tight! I had a stroke, whenever we pulled into a hotel that had a swimming pool. I made dumb wisecracks about not being able to see the food, whenever we passed a restaurant that was a little nice, with candlelight. I’m sorry I talked you into that last trip to Germany, when you were already sick, and the way I glared at you when you were coughing, like your cancer was spoiling our retirement and I’m sorry—what a list I could make —I’m sorry I was out in the garden spreading peat moss and feeling cheated, the morning you died. I’m sorry we never got to say goodbye. At least I think I am. People check out of motels and say more. I’m sorry I was in such a hurry to clean out the house after you died, your clothes out of the drawers, your shoes out of the closet, everything you wore or touched, your soap and perfume. I didn’t know what I was doing, I still don’t, putting boxes of things you cared about out on the curb, or offering them to neighbors— take what you want—forcing gifts on relatives, emptying out our house as though somebody new would be moving on in. I wish you’d warned me about that. You could have said, take your time, let these things linger, these bits and pieces, let them keep
you company awhile. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think that if I’d gone first, you’d’ve stayed here and been okay and not needed someone else, the way I do. You. Stay with me. Even if you don’t forgive me … don’t forget me. We Germans are like pumas. We mate for life. At least we try.
III.
SNUFFY’S RESTAURANT SITS OFF ROUTE 22 IN Scotch Plains. It was our family place. We went there every Sunday, the old man always there when the door opened at 12:15, anxious to beat something called “the luncheon rush” from “the church crowd” and be in on something he called “the first sitting.” What pleasure he took, glancing around an empty dining room, waitresses still slipping on aprons, and forecasting what a “madhouse” this place would be by the time we finished our fishermen’s platters. I hadn’t been to Snuffy’s in years and it had changed while I was away: more Greeks. They’d turned a road house into a Parthenon, with columns, fountains, function rooms, piecemeal additions that surrounded the old place without quite obliterating it. But Joan was waiting for me at the bar.
“Hello, lady,” I said, hopping on a neighboring stool next to her.
“George.” She took both my hands and held them and what I felt in her hands wasn’t eagerness so much as a gathering of nerve, the way people take your hands at a funeral and urge each other to be strong, hang in there.
“You’re looking good,” I said.
“Is that a tan?” she asked.
“I got what I needed,” I replied.
“What was it like, traveling with your father?”
Once I started talking about the old man, I relaxed. I told her about how, when we checked into a motel, the first thing he would do was strip the room: of stationery, visitors magazines, an extra roll of toilet paper. And while we used one bar of soap he’d brought from home and carried from place to place in a wet washrag, he collected dozens of little bars. How he insisted that we always pump our own gas, even when it was raining. And—the classic old man moment—the afternoon I’d picked him up at a laundromat where he’d insisted on doing our wash, even though many of the places we stayed at offered laundry service. I found him pulling stuff out of the dryer. When he was finished, he peeked into neighboring dryers, the way a bum checks a row of coin returns in phone booths, and sure enough he dug out somebody’s orphan sock, white with a red band. He lifted it, scanned it, sniffed it. “It’s clean enough for my foot,” he said.
“But I’m glad we traveled together,” I told Joan. “You can wait too long to do things like that. Before you know it, you’ve missed your chance. That’s what I’ve been learning lately.”
“Just what’s that?”
“You’re the kid, they’re your parents. For years. You’re in the house together. Then you move and you figure it’s over. The longer you’re gone, the more over it gets. But it’s not over. At least, it doesn’t have to be.”
She nodded. She got it. And she knew I wasn’t just talking about getting back in touch with my old man. She came into it, too. And I could see that it made her uncomfortable. It was time to back off.
“So how have you been?”
“There’s good news and bad news,” she replied. “I went on a trip myself, George. Out of the blue, I flew down to Miami and I took a cruise.”
“Where to?”
“You probably think it’s dumb. It was one of those cruise-to-nowhere things you read about. You go out in the Caribbean and sail around in circles.”
“That’s the good news?”
“I knew you’d hate it,” she said. “What could be dumber? Sailing around in circles.”
“Everybody sails in circles,” I said. “The world being round.”
“It’s still stupid.”
“Look, if you liked it …”
“I did like it, George. Not just the meals and stuff. They feed you to death and it’s all B, B plus, tops. But the ocean … I mean … you’re on vacation all year ‘round. But I’d never been on a ship before!” She went on. The smell of the sea, the empty horizon, the motion of the waves, the stars at night. The blue of the sky and sea. She loved it all, without reservation. Sunrise, sunset, stars, horizon. She reminded me of how I was when I’d started out. She reminded me of my early columns.
“What’s the bad news?” I finally asked her. “There was some bad news, you said.”
“Maybe,” she nodded, pushing away her plate.
“Now you’re back in New Jersey.” I said. “Is that it? Eating at Snuffy’s? With me? Your high school reunion coming … which by the way, I want you to attend with me.”
“I went with Kenny,” she said. “On the cruise.”
“Kenny …” I said. “As in …”
“That Kenny,” she answered, nodding.
“I thought,” I couldn’t help saying it, “you learned that lesson.” It was as though I’d slapped her, not that she winced and turned away but she looked as though I’d hit her, like she was discovering that one of the things we shared was the ability to cause pain.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Christ.”
“Hey George?” She managed to smile but it was the kind of smile you get from someone who’s ahead of you. “You were just philosophizing about how nothing is ever over.”
“But Kenny wasn’t what I had in mind.”
Coffee, when it came, felt like a ceremony of departure. In no time, we’d be gone.
“I was thinking about you all the way to Florida,” I said.
“About me?” She seemed surprised at that, that she’d been in my mind when I was so far away—as though, when people get beyond a certain range, they couldn’t occur to you anymore.
“Yes,” I said. “I thought … we could work something out.” I faltered, the whole edifice tumbling to pieces, everything that had seemed logical and inevitable. A great idea, last night. Maybe I’d been right, maybe not, Kenny had finished his examination ahead of me. “What’s Kenny got in mind?”
“Something’s come over him,” she said. “He says he wants to take me to the reunion … I don’t know. He talks … like you talk.” She reached across the table and took my hand. “Something’s happening to all of us right now. What is it?”
“We’re all looking around and measuring how far we’ve come.”
“Or haven’t,” she added.
“And whether we like it. Whether there’s anything we can do about it. In the time that we have. The reunion has something to do with it too. It makes you look at yourself and wonder if there’s a second chance …”
“Last chance?”
“Could be.”
“I don’t want to make the same mistake again, that’s for sure. I don’t want to assume that if you do the normal things you get married, have kids, stay home … you’ll be alright. Because it wasn’t alright. And if you’re right about second chances well I might make another mistake but I’ll tell you one thing, George. I want it to be far from here? Also … far from Kenny.”
Twenty minutes and one hug later, she left. And I lingered at Snuffy’s, considering the picture I made, sitting alone at a bar in New Jersey, wondering what next. Joan was gone, I was pretty sure, outward bound and wherever she found herself, the interest she’d felt in me, the attraction that brought us together for a night, would seem way behind her. I was just another something she’d left behind in New Jersey. Just a guy she went to high school with. So I had some beers, just looking around the room, remembering the hundreds of Sunday dinners I’d had here with my parents. Seafood special with fries and coleslaw, vanilla ice cream for dessert. When I got up, I knew I’d have to watch it, driving home. I could feel the beer. Most of the way home, I drove carefully, begging the roads not to betray me. And I made it, almost all the way. Turning into Hilltop Avenue, I snapped off the headlights and ignition … the way I used to do … and coasted slowly down the street. At the bottom of the hill, the trick was to turn into the driveway with enough speed so that I could roll all the way to the garage. That way, not seeing the headlights, my parents might no
t know when I’d come home. I took the corner fast, crunched onto the gravel and, halfway toward the garage, saw a dark square something right in front of me. I slammed on the brakes, veered to the side, smashed through the forsythia hedge and skidded out onto the grass. Sweating, trembling, all the cockiness drained out of me, I backed onto the driveway and got out. The car looked alright and I’d managed to go between, not over, the forsythia. Still, there were deep ugly ruts in the lawn, which would look awful in the morning. Like a drunk pulled over and made to walk the line, I marched back and forth, stamping the upturned grass, trying to get the sod in place. “Oh, shit,” I muttered. The old man was going to have me now. An angry glare, maybe, or a crack about how I just missed the For Sale sign. Or maybe one of those hard, fatherly stares I got when I struck out in Little League. Jumping up and down on divots of grass, I glanced at the vehicle that blocked the driveway. What do you call those things? Recreational vehicles? Mobile homes? Trailers? I’d seen them by the hundreds, driven by elderly nomads who moved from national park to national park, like migrant crop workers following the harvest, but the crop was sunshine. What the hell was it doing here?
I walked across the grass, behind the garage and pissed long and luxuriantly: something else I used to do, coming home late, avoiding a trip to the bathroom, where my parents would hear me, even though we never flushed after dark. But you could never fool your parents. As I walked back around, the lights snapped on … garage lights, houselights, and the front lawn lights the old man put in after someone sawed off one of his hemlocks just before Christmas twenty years ago. And, when I walked towards the house, ready to face the music, I saw what was waiting for me at the door, and I stopped dead.