by Kluge, P. F.
Inside, God had arrived. God the disc jockey, the heavenly sender, who traveled from party to party, from era to era, big band to acid rock, thirties to eighties, whatever we wanted, and tonight we wanted the sound of the late fifties and early sixties, when we were young and music was good. The golden age, it seemed to us that night, and God a.k.a. Eugene Moretti obliged, from “Why Do Fools Fall In Love” to “Since I Don’t Have You” to “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” and in no time the bar was open, the dance floor was crowded, and a couple hundred people were back where they wanted to be. And yet, even as harmony prevailed, even as I led Joan out onto the floor for “Daddy’s Home,” especially then I wondered about where Kenny Hauser had gone.
“An asshole,” Gooker had said, meeting me at the bar a moment before. “Okay, I know it. I’m drunk. But that doesn’t make me wrong. And I say he’s an asshole. He stank out the place.” Gooker gulped his drink—it looked like he’d shifted to scotch by now. It smelled like scotch, even though he drank it like iced tea. “What did we all do to deserve that kind of lecture? Is this so bad? So stupid? Old friends coming together?”
He gestured out towards the dance floor, where crowds of our classmates shifted from fast dance to slow, all of them pawns of Eugene Moretti, unmoved mover who presided over everything from a portable sound system at the side of the bar.
“He made it sound like all we do out here is date and marry and breed and die and the only adventure we have is a little bit of action on the side …” Gooker drank and, as he swallowed, thought of something funny, so that he spurted some scotch and a half-chewed ice cube out into space. “He forgot softball.”
“You should get out and dance,” I said.
“Yeah, well, a funny thing happened on the way to the reunion. Seems my wife is leaving me.” He stared at me and maybe he was remembering when he’d asked me for my apartment key, brushing away the chance of Kate making the same sort of request.
“A hairdresser,” he said. “The whole town thought he was a fruiter. You believe it?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. Kate and Gooker weren’t a honeymoon couple, that was for sure. That didn’t stop me from hoping they’d last.
“You know something, George?” Gooker asked. “I thought I was the ringmaster of this particular circus. Maybe I’m the clown. That’s not all. These months ahead are gonna be rough.”
“I’ll be here,” I said. “You know where I live.”
It ended like all the dances I remembered, Jesse Belvin’s “Goodnight My Love,” benediction and prayer sounding over a dark dance floor, and then it was time for God the disc jockey to pack up his records, load up his van and drive back to Fort Lee. Brought back together just long enough to wonder about what might have been—all those delectable “ifs”—now it was time for my high school classmates to file out the door and into the parking lot, where our cars awaited us and then, honking and shouting, hugging and waving, leaving almost as if we’d all be back in school comparing notes on Monday morning. Out onto Route 22, out and away, probably—let’s face it— forever: people from New Jersey can’t kid themselves. Not Joan and not me.
“You said you wanted to talk,” she reminded me.
“In a minute,” I said. “We’re almost there.”
I pulled off the highway near Snuffy’s, uphill past the Blue Star Shopping Center—God, those vast malls were odd at night, those plains of asphalt, those dark buildings that went from Two Guys to Korvettes to Caldor, recycling themselves forever—and up over the speed bumps onto Johnson’s Drive and the turnoff I was looking for, a yielding in the darkness, softness between the trees, and then we were at the secret height from which we could see the lights of Manhattan.
“Top of the world,” I said. “Never fails.”
“That’s a movie line, isn’t it?”
“Yes. A Cagney movie. ‘White Heat.’”
“You know what this place reminds me of?” She lit a cigarette and stared out at the lights, at the houselights and street lights that were still and headlights, moving slowly down tree-lined avenues, faster along the highway, some of them our classmates driving home, dispersing into a landscape that ended God knows where. That was the problem—where it ended.
“Jude The Obscure?” Joan said. “By Thomas Hardy?” The way she added the name of the author, she sounded like a student answering questions in a classroom. And then, by way of further explanation. “I read it for a course I took.”
I nodded, listening. It was alright and then some. She didn’t have to apologize for catching up. Or passing.
“And there’s a scene where Jude goes to the outskirts of this more or less hick town he’s born in and praying to get out of, a high-up place like this, and in the distance he spots the lights of the university town where just maybe, if God drops all his other projects, he might someday get educated and change his life and become a better person …”
She took a deep drag, blew the smoke out of the window into the night, exhaling luxuriously. Maybe we were the last generation that would smoke this way. “Christminster was the name of the town,” she said. “I think. Or Jerusalem. Or Hamburg. Or New York. Anywhere but here. That’s what I’ve been thinking about.”
“Listen,” I said. “I’ve been to all those places. And you know what it amounts to? I’ve been dodging from island to island. Because islands are all that’s left. Islands are national parks and resorts and theme parks and beaches and ethnic sections and rich neighborhoods—everywhere else is New Jersey. Believe me, I feel like I’ve been skipping from one place to another, writing up all these puffy columns while all around me the tide was rising, the ocean rolling in.”
“New Jersey.”
“You said it.”
“And so you figure you’ll just … dive right in, huh?”
“I want to come home. To New Jersey. I know there’s better states …”
“About forty-nine of them.”
“But this isn’t something you pick and choose. This is home. And until all this wandering stops, this moving, mine and everybody else’s … there’s no way America’s going to work. That’s the message from my father …”
“But you said he was leaving … going back to Germany, you said.”
“He’s sticking around, but I’ve got the house.”
“So you’re the prodigal son, I guess.”
“He wants me to have it. And I’ll give it a try. As long as he’s alive, I won’t sell it, that’s for sure. I’m coming home. Sinking roots. Taking a stand. Staking a claim.” A deep breath. I turned to her. My high school dream, my Jersey girl, with me on reunion night, the cycle, the circle, the pattern, everything was perfect.
“No way,” she said. “Just listen, will you …”
Random, lonely reading. Odd little courses at schools that mostly taught tai-chi and cooking-with-a-wok and Spanish For Beginners. Heavier stuff at Drew and Rutgers. She’d only guessed she was smart, but for years, circumstances had conspired to keep her from confirming it. Then, a few months ago, she had taken the U.S. Foreign Service exam. Not telling anybody, not really having anybody to tell, and with no greater expectations than filling out a lottery ticket. She was assigned to the U.S. Consulate in Oslo.
“I was hoping … I don’t mind telling you this … that I might see you there sometime,” she said. I guessed she meant it, but it sounded like a good will offering, because she was going either way. I couldn’t stop her. And I couldn’t blame her either.
“Congratulations,” I said.
“Really?”
“I got wrapped up in my own … voyage. I see that. I thought part of my coming back was coming back to you.”
“Well … I’m not your homecoming queen,” she said. “But what are you going to do out here, George? What on earth are you going to do?”
“I’ll give it a try. That’s all. It’ll be harder. Without you …
“I guess.”
“Well …” I snapped on the headlights, which lit up the cl
earing: the overturned shopping cart I’d noticed a few weeks before was still there. I backed out of the clearing and onto the drive, then drove down to the highway, where we joined the traffic. That’s what we were now, part of the traffic. In no time, we were parked outside that garden apartment at the highway’s edge.
“I guess you feel pretty good,” I said, “leaving.”
“It’s high time,” she replied. “You get some of the credit, you know. Just knowing you were out there, seeing your byline from all those far off places, it kept reminding me, ‘hey, I went to high school with that guy.’”
“You get some credit from me,” I told her. “You got me back here.”
“Come in, will you?”
“You mean …”
“If you don’t mind packing boxes.” She leaned over and pressed against me. Nothing left to doubt, nothing to say. No wondering about tonight or tomorrow. My welcome home party, her bon voyage.
V.
“GO OUT AND TALK TO HIM,” PAULINE SAYS AS George pulls in the driveway. It’s not even seven o’clock but we’re both morning people, it turns out, like to get a leg-up on the new day. I nod and step out the door and the morning is plain gorgeous, bright cold air that came down from Canada leaving a last blanket of leaves on the lawn. It’s as though there are cells in my body, sleeping all summer, which wake up and say, let’s get a move on, let’s burn daylight, let’s hit the road and have breakfast a hundred miles from here.
“Hi, Pop,” he says, looking like he’ll be needing a nap before noon. His reunion wore him out, maybe, but I’ve never been one to ask questions about that stuff. His mother dreamed of intimacies and confidences they’d share. She got nowhere. I’ve done better, just waiting, keeping my mouth shut. Now he’s glancing at this mobile home that’s sitting in the driveway.
“Gets maybe six miles a gallon,” I tell him. “But it’s nice inside. Come on, I’ll give you the tour.” So we go up these tiny folding steps I don’t trust yet and you bend to go through the door, which looks to me like one of those flaps that dog owners put in their screen doors so their pooch can get in and out on his own, but inside, I have to admit, built-in kitchen appliances and all. “I stocked it up yesterday,” I say, opening the refrigerator door. “I got creamed herring, dill pickles, limburger cheese and pumpernickel bread, because once we’re out on the road … God knows what we’ll find.”
I gesture to the two berths, upper and lower, the shower, the chemical toilet.
“It’s even got a television,” I say. “I was wondering what to name this thing. Dun Rovin? Heaven on Wheels? Faraway Backyard?”
“Say, Pop?”
“Yes?”
“I think I’d like to try to live here for a while and see if I can make things work.”
“What’ll you do for a living?” I ask. I’m frowning, but inside I’m turning somersaults. “I mean, guidebooks to New Jersey? Is there much call for that kind of thing? Seems to me, people want to know the fastest way through, is all.”
“I don’t know what I’ll write,” he says. “Or if. It won’t be easy. I might fail. Big deal. Maybe I’ll borrow your trailer sometime, work on my scenic map.”
“It’s not a trailer,” I correct him. “A trailer is something you pull. This is something you drive. A recreational vehicle, they call it.”
“Hard getting to Germany in this.”
“We put that off,” I tell him. “Pauline talked me into knocking around America some more … visit your uncle down south … head out west … spend the winter in the desert … and so on.” I gaze around the inside of this contraption and wonder how it’ll work. All my bad habits. My way of dripping all over everything, when I come out of the shower. Also, I bend paper-clips and dig out earwax with them. Sooner or later she’ll catch me doing that. I’m not such a prize. “Anyway, Germany will be there. I haven’t forgotten it.”
“She talked you out of it, didn’t she?” he asks, gesturing towards the house.
“She … I don’t know … she got me to consider whether what I was missing wasn’t the Germany that used to be, but the America that …”
“You hoped would be?” George looks up at me and takes my hand and suddenly I get the oddest feeling, it’s like we’re in business together, me and him. “Still hope.”
I nod. “Something like that.”
“Oh boy,” he says. “Travel writer who knocks around America comes home. Travel writer’s father hits the road with his new partner. Pop, you’re really something. Did you have all this planned?”
“I’m not that smart,” I say, in a way that suggests he’s not so far off the mark. Take credit where you can. “In the end … I’m an Amerikaner. I traveled. I found something I loved. Found it again, I should say.”
“What’s that?”
“You. And Pauline. She dances rings around us both.”
“Yes. She does. I’m glad you found her. Or she found you.”
“Anyway … we’ll go out and knock around some … see what’s out there.”
I see Pauline coming out of the house. Leaning towards him, I whisper. “Could be I’ll be in Germany yet. This gallivanting around … it’s no sure thing.”
“Neither is this New Jersey thing,” he answers. “I’ll give it a try.”
“That’s good, son. That’s fine. Don’t rush things. Don’t expect too much. This isn’t the neighborhood for miracles.” Then I think—but I don’t say—maybe it is. He’s home. That’s a miracle.
“Audience, subject, self,” Pauline Kennedy says, stepping inside.
“Huh?”
“The big three. George knows.” Then she says, “Good morning, George.”
“Kenny got you home alright?” he asks.
“Eventually. We went to a diner on the highway and we talked for a while.” She glances at me. “We have an invitation to the Holy Land.”
“Maybe we’ll take him up on it,” I say. “But see America first, they say.”
He stands there, my son, watching us pull out the driveway. I take my time about it. This thing drives like a cement truck. He follows us out the driveway and then, as we back onto Hilltop Avenue, he walks across the yard waving. I see him pulling the for-sale sign out of the grass in front of our house. And I picture him walking over to the beer-party table to pay his respects to the old timers.