“I’m all ears.”
“The only reason I called was because I was talking to your father tonight and he sounded so miserable when I mentioned Loreen’s name, I felt I owed it to him to call my fiancée. Vivian’s right: I should get to a shrink.”
“I spent the night with two of them. I can give you their number if you want.”
“Who’s this, that ex-wife of Arthur’s? I don’t like the sound of her.”
“You don’t like the sound of anyone. She and her husband invited us over for champagne. Our mortgage came through.”
“No kidding? I’m glad someone’s life is going well.”
I suddenly felt so offended by the comment, by his apparent need to think that everything was going well for me, I wanted to leap through the phone and strangle him. “My life is not going well!” I shouted.
“Take it easy, will you? How am I supposed to know your life isn’t going well if you don’t tell me about it?”
Perhaps it was the late hour or the quiet dark of the house, or maybe the closing date on the house was making me desperate and all my buried discontent was floating to the surface. Whatever it was, I started confessing my doubts about the house to Tony and then, much more alarmingly, some of my doubts about my relationship with Arthur.
My brother was so quiet on the other end of the line, I gratefully assumed he’d fallen asleep. Finally, he said, as if making a painful confession himself, “I might as well tell you right now, Patrick, and I hope you don’t get pissed off: I never liked Arthur.”
“Now you tell me! I thought Arthur was the one person you did like. For the past six years, all I’ve heard from you is how wonderful he is.”
“Well, what did you expect? That’s what you always say about somebody’s wife or husband or whatever he is. I’m not saying he’s a monster, but he thinks he knows everything, and you can’t get him to tell you what he really thinks of people. I can’t prove anything, so don’t tell him I told you, but ever since you two came out here and I let him drive my car, it hasn’t been running the same.”
“I warned you about that.”
“I know, but I had no idea he was as bad as you claimed. The minute I saw him pull out of the garage at two miles an hour, with the emergency flashers and the wipers on, I knew that relationship was burned meat loaf.”
“Well, whatever it is, we’re about to sign a thirty-year mortgage.”
“Don’t be an idiot, Patrick. If you don’t want the house, don’t buy it. It’s that simple.”
“Simple, sure. But it’s already too far along to stop.”
“A bullet through the head’s the only thing that’s final. And I don’t care how much deposit money you’d lose; it still has to be better than losing the rest of your life and all the money you’re going to pour into the dump. Between you and me, what kind of person would buy a yellow house?”
“I’m not sure that’s the best way to judge character. Anyway, he’s a good person, Tony.”
“I don’t doubt it. It’s too bad everything he does drives you crazy, that’s all. Love and pity, man, it’s a bad combination.”
There was something in the conversation that was beginning to sound familiar, although I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Whatever it was, talking with Tony about Arthur made me feel more calm and relieved than I’d felt in weeks. After we’d hung up, I went back to the magazine article about the end of the world and read it enthusiastically. The pessimistic account of the death of all recognizable forms of life on the planet had a soothing effect on me. Shadows from the votive candles were flickering across the ceiling, and the sound of the rain leaking through the porch roof was almost romantic. I began to get happily drowsy and pulled a heavy blanket over me. When Arthur had suggested I make this tiny room my own, we’d agreed that no matter how much time I spent there, I would always sleep in our bedroom. But tonight, perhaps encouraged by my talk with Tony, I let myself drop off in the candlelight and slept, without interruption, until morning.
Twenty-six
In my years at Only Connect, I developed several theories on the nature and psychology of travel, the central hypothesis of them being that happy individuals at peace with themselves do not travel. Or at least don’t like to travel. Of all the great travelers in history, the overwhelming majority took to the roads to avoid extreme malaise and, nine times out of ten, some degree of sexual panic. Travel, as a vocation, has consistently attracted almost as many guilt-ridden cross-dressers, repressed homosexuals, and tormented pedophiles as the religious orders.
Of course a one-week trip to the Bahamas can’t really be called travel, in the grand tradition, and in that sense, Only Connect was more a vacation factory than a travel agency. Unfortunately, most people don’t like to vacation, either. Young professionals need something to brag about at cocktail parties, so they go on vacations. The majority would rather spend their time off at the movies. If it weren’t for the demands of upward mobility, Only Connect would be out of business.
Most people are afraid to fly but ashamed to admit it because it’s considered lower-class to distrust air travel. If Lindbergh had come from a family of sharecroppers, people would still be crossing the Atlantic in ocean liners. As for hotels, those nonplaces are intrinsically depressing and unwholesome. Paying outrageous sums for the privilege of staying in them and having your life dictated by a staff of desk clerks, bellhops, housekeepers, and waitrons is an exercise in self-degradation.
All of which made my new vocation of talking people out of going away so gratifying. It wasn’t only the Party’s Over desperadoes who could be set on the right path; with a few probing questions and the proper attitude, anyone could be convinced to do what he really wanted to do: stay at home. “So you and your wife want to go to a romantic island? Are you really trying to tell me the romance has gone out of your marriage? How long have you been feeling this way?” “You want a seat at the back of the plane? In other words, you’re tormented by the fear that the plane is going to crash. Why not take a nice long drive to Hartford instead? Rio will be there ten years from now.”
If, however, I’d wanted to talk Professor Fields out of his trip to Bermuda, I should have begun at the beginning. By mid-April it was too late to do anything but make a genuine effort to get him seats on the plane. Then, too, my attitude toward the man had taken an unexpected turn: during his last whispered call, sometime shortly after Arthur and I heard about the mortgage, I began to feel a twinge of empathy for him. He’d called to make more inquiries about the nonexistent hotel reservation and the decor of the nonexistent hotel room and the size of the nonexistent bed, and there was something in his hushed voice and his pathetic, suppressed excitement that touched me. Obviously he was trapped in a passionless marriage and was trying to make some breathing space for himself by taking this ill-fated trip with Zayna. Memorial Day weekend was probably the only thing he’d had to look forward to in years, discounting the occasional visit to a zoo. As for Zayna, if she wasn’t genuinely in love with him, she was pursuing her academic goals to the best of her abilities, and I couldn’t very well begrudge either motivation.
I called the sales representative of the airline in question and told him that because of an unforeseen and tragic series of events, I had bungled a reservation and a customer of mine had been canceled from a flight. I told him that Professor Fields—“practically the president of Harvard”—was on the wait list and pleaded with him to do something about finding two seats on the plane.
The sales rep and I had met at a couple of airline functions and hadn’t exactly hit it off. Gary Bolton was a pathologically disingenuous windbag with the kind of pink, overscrubbed skin that’s a sign of severe self-hatred. He tended to give me leering looks and make ridiculous comments. “You’ve got awfully big feet, Pat, for such a skinny runt”; that kind of charming thing. I hated to beg for favors, but I made the best of it by reminding myself there’s always something to be said for practicing humility.
Bolton
responded to my Fields plight with the saccharine concern that seemed to be the only requirement of his job. He clucked his tongue a lot and repeated “Isn’t that a shame” so many times I thought I was listening to a tape loop. Finally, he said, “Well, hold on for a minute and I’ll see if there’s anything I can do for you. Not that there isn’t a lot I’d like to do for you.”
There was so little conviction or sincerity in his voice, I suspected he’d merely gone to the bathroom to scrub off another layer of epidermis. When he finally came back on the line, he was noisily chomping on something—peanut M&M’s, from the sound. Obviously he’d been off at the candy machine. “That flight is so damned tight as it is, people are going to be sitting on each other’s faces and laps and everywhere else.”
“Is there a regulation against putting passengers in the cargo hold? I know they wouldn’t mind, just for a couple of hours.”
“You know, we wouldn’t be having such a big problem here if you’d called in the ticket numbers when you were supposed to. Had your mind elsewhere, I bet.”
“Believe me, Gar, I would have called them in if it hadn’t been for the accident. But how can you predict these things? You’re walking to work, a bus comes along, jumps the curb, and you wake up in a hospital bed.” Since I knew he wouldn’t go for any excuse, I figured I might as well make it truly implausible.
“A tragedy,” he consoled. “But I’ll tell you what I can do for you; I’ll put your friends at the top of the wait list. That way, if anyone does cancel, they’ll be the first on. And in the meantime, I’ll book them on a triple connection through New York, Atlanta, and Detroit. Just be thankful you’re such a cute kid, or I wouldn’t be going so far out of my way.”
“Cute kid” had lost its appeal as a compliment on my eighth birthday, but I wasn’t in a position to complain. This at least sounded hopeful. I finished off the phone call renewed by my good deed and convinced that Professor Fields was lucky to have such a clever travel agent working on his behalf.
Twenty-seven
By all accounts, Sharon and Ryan were in the middle of a blossoming friendship. Since the meal at my apartment, they’d gone to two Celtics games together and had several dinners at restaurants Sharon picked out from among her Boston favorites. They’d apparently established a routine of watching Jeopardy together at Sharon’s house. Rita called to complain that Ryan was spending more time in Cambridge than at home.
Despite Tony’s feelings about Sharon, he seemed delighted with the news. He told me our older brother was making repairs on the staircase leading up to Sharon’s second floor, replacing balusters and plastering the holes in the walls. “He called me up to find out how to do it. It was kind of nice, Pat. I mean, I’m sure it looks like hell. He’s great in the kitchen but not exactly a handyman. I hope I get some points from Sharon for giving instructions.”
What I was most curious to find out was whether or not their get-togethers qualified as dates. Sharon wasn’t giving out clues on that subject, and I thought it best to restrain myself from asking. I was secretly thrilled for both of them, no matter what the terms of their friendship, but something about the fact that it had begun weeks after Elaine asked for a divorce made me uneasy.
If they were dating, they’d already passed number three, the critical date, according to Sharon’s philosophy. As for the fourth fuck, it was anyone’s guess.
One Sunday afternoon late in April, Ryan, Sharon, and my niece showed up at my apartment unexpectedly. I hadn’t seen or spoken with Ryan since our talk at the store a couple of weeks earlier, and as he walked in, with Stacy held proudly in his arms, it struck me that his appearance was slightly altered. It would be going overboard to say he was glowing, but it seemed to me his face was less waxen than usual. Perhaps he’d been in the sun or the wind. If it was from a tanning booth, the dating question was answered. Sharon was trailing behind, a cigarette dangling from her lips. She was carrying a pink, pretty doll with as much interest as if it were a rotten head of lettuce. I pointed to it and raised my eyebrows.
She shrugged. “Transitional object,” she said. She had on a bulky belted gray cardigan and a pair of flared blue jeans that were almost short enough to qualify as pedal pushers, but she, too, looked different, more relaxed than usual.
Ryan was beaming at Stacy. He always beamed when he had his daughter in his charge. “You remember Uncle Patrick,” he said. “Can you say his name?”
Stacy took her thumb out of her mouth, swatted her hand at me as if she were shooing a fly, then buried her face in Ryan’s neck. “Aw, she’s being shy,” Ryan said.
Stacy was a bright, pretty child, with fat cheeks, adorably stubby legs, and her father’s round blue eyes. She loved to dance and pretend she was playing a piano and singing. I was convinced she’d become a professional musician someday, maybe a cabaret performer with a devoted following of gay men. She was four years old and had a better articulated sense of style than either of her parents. On her last birthday, I’d bought her a punky black skirt and red-and-white sweater I thought she’d like. After she thanked me for the present, she asked if I’d kept the sales slip so she could exchange the outfit. “It’s not really me,” she’d said apologetically. Today she was wearing lacy white ankle socks, black patent-leather Mary Janes, and a frilly pink dress with blue ribbons hanging from the waistline.
Aside from occasional holidays, I’d spent very little time with Stacy, and I was desperately afraid she didn’t like me much. She’d never been able to pronounce my name, even though she had an extensive vocabulary. I was stung by the slight, but I had to respect her for having strong opinions and sticking by them. Ryan told me she probably had a crush on me, his usual optimistic assessment of friction between any two people.
Stacy and Arthur had become great pals the few times they’d met. She squealed with delight when he came into the living room now. “Uncle Arthur,” she pronounced flawlessly.
“My best friend!” he said. He began singing “Surrey with the Fringe on Top,” and Stacy wriggled down from Ryan’s arms and ran to him.
Sharon looked at me reproachfully. “At least it’s not ‘Hello, Dolly,’” I told her. “What brings you two here? Not that I’m complaining.”
“Sharon’s always asking about Stacy,” Ryan answered, “so I thought I’d drag her into town and show her off.”
“Then I remembered how I feel about kids,” Sharon said.
“She’s joking. She and Stacy are in love with each other.”
I wondered if this meant he and Sharon were in love with each other.
“Anyway, it’s an incredible day. Sunny, windy, warm. We thought we’d hang out at the river. There’s a love-in going on down there.”
“Love-in?” Arthur asked. He was walking around the living room with Stacy balanced on the toes of his shoes.
“Every time Ryan sees a group of people in Cambridge, he calls it a love-in,” Sharon explained. “It’s a beautiful day, and we decided to take a walk.”
“So we thought we’d drive over here and see if you guys wanted to come. We’re going to drive up to the Square and find a place to park near the river and then maybe drive out to the ocean.”
“Where does the walk come in?” Arthur asked.
“We had to walk up three flights of stairs to get here,” Ryan said. “Anyway, we’ll probably have to get out of the car at some point and walk to buy pizza or fried clams.”
Both Sharon and Ryan burst into laughter at this comment, and the idea of spending time with them suddenly appealed to me enormously. I looked over at Arthur to see if he was interested. “Unfortunately,” he said, “I have to prepare some work for tomorrow. But you should go along and enjoy yourself.”
“Even if it sounded like he didn’t mean it,” Sharon said, “he did give you permission to go, Patrick. Of course we could all learn from Arthur’s example, working on Sunday. I really do admire that kind of dedication.”
“If you were any more dedicated,” Ryan told her, “
you’d have to put a bed in your office. Did you know she’s sometimes at that office twelve hours a day, Pat?”
“I hate to be the one to tell you, but she does have a bed in her office. A futon rolled up behind the desk.” I didn’t mention that she kept it there for her afternoon naps.
* * *
Stacy was miserable that Arthur wasn’t coming along, but she accepted me as a consolation prize and let me carry her downstairs. She poked her fingers through my hair and asked if Arthur and I were married. “Certainly not,” I said, mortified. “We’re not even engaged. He’s still available.”
As Ryan had promised, the day was warm and windy, splendid late-April weather, the kind of gentle and breezy afternoon that can trick you into thinking all’s right with the world—if you didn’t happen to know it was about to come to a swift, fiery end. Ryan made a production of piling and strapping us all into his car, but after driving three blocks, we discovered that Memorial Drive was closed to traffic and we parked at the side of the road. Hordes of people were passing by on bicycles and roller skates, were jogging, hooked up to headphones—hopeful, happy people, dressed in bright, hopeful colors, exulting on a Sunday afternoon.
The wind was blowing across the river from the west, whipping up whitecaps on the surface of the water, and the sky was a deep shade of blue, heartbreaking for being so clean and so rare. Stacy and I were in the back of the car. She was trying to teach me a complicated counting game that was over my head. My attention drifted away from her, and for a fleeting moment I felt absolutely content and happy. Ryan had his arm draped across the back of Sharon’s seat. He reached up and gave her hair a gentle tug as she blew smoke out the window.
The Easy Way Out Page 23