“I’m not looking to drum up business,” she said, cheerfully.
Barnes felt sorry for Tim. He had won, in a way, yet she saw him as a man who could not win. Which might be unfair. What man could win? What constituted “winning” in life? Still, she worried about a perfectly decent person who seemed to need trouble more than peace.
“I thought we’d go down to the diner,” he said, as she unlocked her car. “You don’t want a cheeseburger? My treat.”
“I’m not hungry, believe it or not.”
“How about a gallon of black coffee? To go?”
“I’m all set, Tim.” The engine was running now.
“Great, then. So thanks for everything and I’ll see you at the party. I’ll hand deliver your official invitation.”
She reached out to give his arm a quick squeeze, then pulled away from the curb.
“A cameo,” he called after her. “Five minutes. And you can leave boring old Leon at home.”
Tim was not surprised when Barnes sent her regrets, blaming the husband Leon, who may or may not have existed. What did surprise him was having no word from Just Ed. Tim had recorded a memo for Ed, giving the particulars and requesting an R.S.V.P. “You are flat out nuts,” said Karl, but instinct informed Tim this was the correct thing to do. Or the appealing thing.
Just Ed did not R.S.V.P., or attend, or ever call again. In time he would fade to become no more than a story Tim could tell to fresh acquaintances at bars and clubs. It was such a good story that he never embellished it, never “added a piece onto it” as his friend Mary McDermott used to say. Sometimes he regretted not having a better ending, although the open-endedness had some appeal. After all, Just Ed might yet call (or start shooting from a rooftop) any next tomorrow to come. Danger in the latent stage.
The party itself was sedate, until Pete Weissberg produced his infamous Very Worst of Disco tape. This music, though universally despised, managed to surface at every party. Tim saw it coming and slipped outside with Karl to taste the night air.
“I’m pretty sure this is the first party I’ve been to since your barbecue in Jaffrey. You are becoming quite the host, Timmy.”
“You hosted that one with me.”
“I was in the neighborhood.”
“You have been right there for me through all this mess, Karl. Don’t think I haven’t noticed. And I know you’ve had your little friend to worry about the whole time.”
“Do I believe my ears? Am I really hearing jealousy from Timothy R. Bannon?”
“I am not jealous.”
“But you are, and I love it. It’s certainly preferable to your lousy gratitude.”
“The charge is denied. And look who’s coming. I think we both know who’s jealous now.”
Jay Collingsworth joined them at the back gate, angling between them as though determined to prove Tim’s assertion. “I trust I’m not interrupting anything too important.”
“Hey, what’s important?” said Tim.
“Your place is so charming. I’m amazed you pay only four hundred.”
“Shhhh, don’t wake the landlord.”
“All right, a very quiet toast, then: to your ambitious new adventure, Tim. May it prosper.”
Ambitious? Watching Billy and Cindy grow up; helping them do so? Tim’s real ambition (accurately stated by the BeeGees, of all people) was staying alive. If he stayed alive for ten years, he would see the kids through to college.
“Thank you, Jay, and don’t be too shocked if you find yourself drafted into the adventure from time to time.”
“Honored. But I gather you are off on a short trip first?”
“Before I settle into the grind. The Spittle of Glenshee is calling out to me.”
“Ravenglass!” said Karl, raising his glass again.
“I’m sure it will be every bit as wet as Ravenglass.”
“Soaked and shivering! Tim’s idea of bliss.”
“Hey, it’s the least I’m owed. After that I’ll be settling down bigtime.”
“Everyone else is. Do you remember Mo D’Angelis?”
“Sure I do. Hunky T, Artie used to call him. The Hunky Tradesman. He was with Norm Boucher, among others.”
“Right. And he also chased women.”
“Seriously? That I never knew.”
“Anyway, the moral of the story is that times have changed. It’s the 90’s now and sex is safe. Even Mo D. has settled down—way down, as in married. Monosexual and monogamous.”
“That guy? He was supposed to be a wild man.”
“Not anymore. He walks the dog, burps the baby.”
“Just like you, Tim,” said Jay, wedging back into the conversation.
“Just like me.”
Victor Perry appeared, wearing a grimace of apology. He had answered Tim’s phone. “Sorry. I was practically sitting on it when it rang.” Tim excused himself and went to take it on the bedroom extension. Just Ed calling to R.S.V.P.? (Or Cindy, her first night sleeping at the McManuses.…) But the call was from his mother, seeking a progress report.
“It’s too soon for progress, Mom, but I think they’re fine.”
“Who was that answering the telephone?”
“A friend. I have a few friends here, visiting.”
“Is Ellie Stern there?”
“Yes she is, actually. I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow, Mom. I’ll call after your breakfast.”
By the time Tim returned to the living room, everyone was moving toward the door. Exodus. It was as though the bell had rung, math class was over and history would begin somewhere down a long polished corridor. Call me, said Ellie. I’ll call you, said Karl. A rounding-off.
Tim trailed his guests down the block to Columbus Ave., where they dispersed. The avenue was parked up solid, even the fire lane in the middle, and he watched the Peters thread their way across to Concord Square. A Buick ragtop streamed past, underlit in lavender neon cool, riding a booming radio surf.
Then he spotted a figure in front of Jae’s—just some guy standing underneath the restaurant sign. Eight million stories in the naked city, he smiled, and then amended it to three million for provincial little Beantown. A lot of stories, either way. But what if the guy was Ed? Just Ed, lacking the final push that would take him over to Tim’s party. Sad, lurky, anonymous Ed.
The man stomped out his cigarette and turned into Concord Square. If he stopped to look back, Tim decided, that would constitute proof. But it was impossible to tell. The darkness thickened as the street curved away, and the form receded until it was just a skating shadow which quickly merged with the shimmering gray-black night.
VII
GRAVY
Tim did not make his way to the Spittle of Glenshee that week, or to Semipalatinsk. He went home.
Flew into Charlotte, rented a Ford Ludicra one shirt size larger than himself, and meandered south through the familiar farm and lumber towns. He rolled into Berline right on schedule, three o’clock of a bright dusty afternoon.
His mother was restless and wanted to walk around the village, which suited him after six hours of sitting. Anne liked to walk the flat area behind Railroad Street, where the lower, older structures were clustered—a neighborhood oddly unchanged over half a century. The feed store, the moribund trainshed (now a farmer’s market on Saturdays), the corn mill with faded red paint last renewed in 1969.
Nothing here stopped the sun, from any angle. It spread over the unpaved lots, spilled down roughwood fire escapes. At this hour, it lay like a carpet all the way out to the switchyard.
“It’s not a garage,” Tim was explaining. “It’s pretty much the size of my apartment in Boston.”
“I’m not concerned about the garage, Timmy, I’m concerned about the children.”
“Don’t be. I know them, Mom. They are going to be okay.”
“Oh Lord, Timmy. Those children have no mother, no father.”
“They will be loved, though. And they’re a lot older than you think.”
> “Younger than you think,” she said, stopping to watch two squirrels winding their way up a live oak, noting that the Spanish moss was sturdy enough to take their weight. Days like today, when she felt her energy and the weather was fine, Anne toyed with the idea of bringing her grandchildren to Berline. There were too many days of the other kind, though, and the world had changed too much.
“What I’m concerned about,” said Tim, “is you, here, alone.”
“Timmy, I’ve been alone for six years. Or is it seven?”
“I know that, Mom. But, you know: more alone.”
How could Tim reassure his mother about the future when the future meant death? A year from now Tim could see himself with the children full time; increasingly that was his working scenario. But death was a possible scenario too. A year from now, he and Anne might both be dead.
“I have no end of tears for Jilly. No end. But I find I don’t mind about you. In a way, I’m relieved to have an explanation. I was so afraid you were one of those unreliable selfish men.”
“Oh I am.”
“Don’t you tell me more than I asked to know. I truly do not mind, Timmy. It is your life, after all.”
“Mom, you’re a liberal.”
“That’s what your daddy used to say. Sometimes, Anne, I believe you are going liberal on me.”
“Daddy was a liberal too, in some ways.”
“He didn’t hate the blacks, if that’s what you mean. That was about it, though, for liberalism. Truthfully he was not a political man at all, just a practical man who minded his own.”
“Erica is the only rock hard reactionary in the family.”
“Rock hard? She’s just a branch in the wind, that girl. Always was.”
“We’re getting better, Ric and I. I think we’re friends.”
“That’s a good thing. Maybe in time you can graduate to being sister and brother.”
“Maybe. You know, politics doesn’t matter much to me, either. Not as such. It’s not like I have a big political agenda.”
“That’s good too. No one ever got happy having a political agenda.”
“Though there are always battles that need to be fought.”
“No doubt there are. But why are we fighting about it?”
“We’re not, we’re just walking and talking. Do you want to drive out to the cemetery? Walk some more out there?”
“I was there this morning. I’m not exactly a stranger to the place.”
They went anyway. Tim did not go to see Jill’s marker, or to scope out the crime he intended to commit. (Would he really be a graverobber, like Burke and Hare? But that he would find out in the days ahead.) It was his father’s marker he wanted to see today.
Rex had engraved it himself, the year he was sick. His latest and last hobby, tinkering with stone. And nothing could be farther from politics than the inscription he chose, from Ecclesiastes, a time to be born and a time to die. Judge Enneguess would have approved. Insofar as Rex Bannon was concerned, your time to die was whenever you did so. Until then you went about your business. A practical man, to be sure.
An oldfashioned man, Tim thought, with some pride, as they came back over the dense springy grass. It was silly to ponder Rex overmuch, obsess about him, as though there were truths about yourself to unlock simply because a man was your father. He was an oldfashioned man and you were gay in the 90’s. He was a silent man and you liked to joke and banter. Tim might have more in common with Blind Teddy Copeland, if both their lives hinged on persecution and on the blues.
But that was a false positive. In truth, Ted Copeland’s life hinged more on certain heavyset women (among them his wife Thelma), on his children and grandchildren, his friends and good-natured enemies like Ben Creek who had once cut him with a knife. It hinged on big noon dinners and naps in the open air; on farmwork, for which he had a genuine talent, and music, which for Ted happened to be the blues.
“I only hope you can be happy,” Anne had said, back at the switchyard. “That’s all I ever did hope, so why change now?”
Happy? What about Anne, strolling with her queer son from the premature resting place of her daughter and beloved husband? Anne lived alone and had no work to absorb her. She had been assigned to live in grief for the duration, yet she did seem, in some ungraspable way, a happy person. Her life also hinged on other matters: on sunshine warming her porch, the ritual arrival of the morning newspaper, old friends, bridge games and Bingo, Oprah Winfrey. The list was fairly long and the Lord, Tim understood, did move in mysterious ways.
Tim, who viewed his own life as meaningless and in a way hopeless, took stock of himself next. I am half bald, one-eighth gray, very likely HIV Positive, and I haven’t even got a dog. I am going nowhere fast. Or not even fast, just nowhere.
Except New Hampshire. And I could get a dog—how hard is it to get a dog? The kids could take care of him when I needed to be in Boston, he could be great pals with their dog (name them Melville and Hawthorne maybe) and when they went away to college I’d take over. I’d have the dogs instead of the kids, so I would still be somebody’s uncle.
Tim and Anne moved in silence, leaning arm in arm. The burial ground smelled of baked earth and windfall peaches, seasoned not so nicely by the sour sulfurous afflatus of the pulp mill, ten miles west. There was no happy ending for Tim here or anywhere else (“It’s not like that,” as Dee Barnes was fond of saying) yet he felt distinctly optimistic, inexplicably excited. You could be happy without happiness, apparently. Wasn’t that the true meaning of the blues?
Anything beyond breathing was gravy.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2003 by Larry Duberstein
ISBN: 978-1-4532-9347-8
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The Mt. Monadnock Blues Page 25