“It looks nice. Jervis did a good job. I like it traditional,” said Jim, though he was so nearsighted the tree looked like an upturned skiff. His mom always had the house professionally decorated at Christmas. Last year, Jervis had gone for a Georgia O’Keeffe look, with sand, cactuses, stones, bleached bones, and Christmas bulbs inside cow skulls, and the year before it was Finnish. Then Jim noticed the table was set for fifteen persons. But there are only four of us, he thought to himself.
As I mentioned, Bert&Willy’s Ice Cream is picking up most of the tab for the writing of “Christmas in Vermont,” but corporate underwriting can’t hope to cover all of the writer’s costs. E.g. rewriting to make the story phenomenally good—that first paragraph, with the boy struggling through the blizzard with the dog in his arms, took almost three months. It was hard work, and in the midst of it, I had to run off to Sumatra and rescue a threatened species in the big rain forest they have there, and that’s why I’m coming directly to you, my readers, and asking for your support. Only your generous gifts will insure that many more stories of this quality will keep coming your way and insure that I don’t have to let those animals perish. It only takes a minute to do this.
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THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT!
“Why fifteen? Who’s coming for dinner besides us?” asked Jim. His mom shrugged. “Some people we met. I don’t know. Vermonters. Storytellers. People from public television. They seemed nice. Some fund-raisers for nonprofits, our coffee dealer and his lover Bert, and Dr. Will, the holist. He was on our whale-watching cruise last fall.”
“Tony’s cough is pretty raspy,” Jim said. “You don’t suppose Dr. Will could give him a shot or something, do you?”
“Holists don’t give shots, Tony. They work with nutrition and relaxation.”
“Well, Tony’s sick. Please help him. I’m all pooped out. I gotta grab some shut-eye.” He hauled the poor old pooch up the grand staircase and into Sharon’s vast bedroom, adorned with giant Matisse prints and furnished eclectically with white Scandinavian bookshelves, antique Victorian chairs and tables, and an elegant Shaker fireplace and hearth. He boosted the dog up into her canopied bed. Tony groaned. How ironic that the dog might die on Christmas, here in this ornate colonial bedroom the size of a gymnasium!
A moment later the door opened, and there was Sharon, Jim’s tall, willowy songwriter sister, in the arms of Vince, her boyfriend the ceramicist, who was tugging on the shoulder strap of her blue jumper, trying to access her bosom. “Beat it, Jim,” he snarled, and raised his fist to pound on the child. Vince shaped pots and plates all day and his right arm was as powerful as a trip-hammer.
“Grrrrrrr,” growled Tony, trying to leap up from under the covers, though he was too weak.
Just as Jim was about to be pummeled by Vince, Jim’s dad, Jack, waltzed in. “Hi, kids,” he said. “Hi, Tony. How’s tricks?” He smelled of a cilantro aftershave, and he looked youthful and tanned and taut and extremely fit. In fact, he appeared to be several years younger than either of his children. He smiled effortlessly. “Look what just came from my kiln!” he cried.
“What is that?” asked Sharon.
Jack grinned at her. “It’s a trivet,” he said.
With literary costs rising each year, it becomes more and more difficult for writers to offer their stories to readers at a reasonable price. The Vermont Christmas Catalogue is one way you can help me keep from having to raise my rates. When you purchase one of these gifts, a portion of the price is earmarked for fiction:
COLORFUL TILE TRIVETS. These handcrafted earth-tone tiles from Vermont are fascinating additions to any kitchen counter. 6 × 6: $40 each.
OLD-TIME HOLLY WREATHS. A traditional Christmas is yours with a supply of fragrant holly wreaths, sprays, and garlands from northern Vermont, harvested by traditional Morris dancers whose mountain lodge has been a center of tradition since 1981. One large crate: $164.
JUICY APPLES. A selection of Vermont’s finest. One doz.: $15.
SHAKER LOVE SEAT. Handsomely fashioned from white birch. The classic simplicity of this heirloom piece will add distinctive charm to your home or office. $1,900.
“Tony’s dying, I think, of pneumonia,” said Jim.
“That’s too bad. We’ll get the best medical care available, regardless of cost,” said Jack. “I think Dr. Will is coming for dinner. Maybe he can save him. We met him at the Woffats’. He seemed nice. He does a program of Renaissance music and storytelling on public radio on Sunday afternoons from one-thirty to three. I’ll ask him to have a look.”
Downstairs, the bell rang—bongggg, bongggg. The door opened, and there were murmurs, and Sarah yelled up the stairs, “Never mind. It’s only the wine man.”
Tony’s eyes were dilated and red, his nose was dry and scaly. His tongue was whitish. Jim stayed near the bed, wondering if even the vast, ill-gotten fortune of his parents could make the dog well. Tears ran down his cheeks. “Why did we come to Vermont?” he sobbed. “Why didn’t we stay in New York, where there are great veterinarians?”
Jack sat on the edge of the bed. He’d attended a workshop on male intimacy, and knew how to handle the situation. He touched Jim, to validate him, and instead of telling Jim to shut up and quit bawling, he asked if he wanted to talk about it.
“Yes, of course I want to talk about it! Why else would I bring it up?” yelled Jim.
“I sympathize with your anger completely and I am grateful to you for sharing it with me,” said Jack.
Jim poured out his hatred of Vermont. All the white frame houses with dark-green shutters, picket fence, and maple trees, and the perfectly stacked woodpile, the white spire of the Congregational church, the cemetery full of Jareds and Obadiahs and Samuels, snow falling, candles in the windows, and the ghosts of Emerson, Thoreau, John Adams, Robert Frost, wandering around with their strong cheekbones and lantern jaws and flinty blue eyes and big white incisors. So much rectitude! “I hate the constant drumming of ethics! It makes me wish I were in the arms of a fat sweaty woman,” cried Jim.
“I didn’t realize that you knew about fat sweaty women,” said his father.
“I read pornography all the time. Scratch ’n Sniff books with naked girls in them. It’s my main pleasure in life,” cried the child. And he reached down into his pocket and pulled out a copy of Shake It, Shaker Babes, with a picture of angular women, their black homespun dresses around their ankles, simple tasteful Shaker breasts perched proudly on the lean rib cage, hands joined, singing:
The gift to be simple is the gift to be free,
The gift to take our panties down and pee.
And when we pee in the place just right,
We’ll take off our blouses and dance all night.
We’ll make a mess of garlic shrimp,
And drink till we’re silly and laugh till we’re limp,
And grab hold of strangers and dance the Wahoo,
And I’ll sleep on the floor with my arms around you.
“I want to howl. I want to party. I want to get down,” said Jim. “There’s too many values up here, too much woodsmoke, too much cinnamon. It’s like Iowa with scenery, relentless good taste, one after the other. Fresh-ground coffee and baguettes and sunsets and colonial structures—Dad, I miss rock ’n roll. I miss grease.”
“But we have a McDonald’s here,” said his dad.
“It looks like a Quaker meetinghouse. The golden arches are carved on an antiqued wood sign beside the door, and the gold is dull and cracked, it’s pre-aged. The Big Mac is se
rved on an oak cutting board, and people eat it with a knife and fork, with a wine. And there’s a ski-up window. It’s not a real McDonald’s. It’s Vermont.”
Their dialogue was interrupted by the sudden arrival of Dr. Will, a pleasant open-faced man in a blue running suit who looked truly healthy through and through. “Jim, Jack—what a pleasure,” he said. “Sarah asked me to check on Tony. How is he doing?”
“Near death.”
“Here. We’ll just have a look. Hmmmm. Let me just check his eyeballs. Nnnhnnn. Sort of red. Corneal infection, I’m afraid. But no prob, Bob. We’ll just do a corneal acupuncture. Don’t worry.” He took out a fistful of needles and a hankie. “All we do is place needles in the energy junctions on the corneas and he’ll be feeling great in a jiffy.”
“No, please. No,” Jim said. He looked away in pain.
“It’ll hurt a little, but don’t worry. As long as he doesn’t blink, it won’t bleed much.”
You’re lying, just trying to reassure me, thought Jim, and then he heard two little ticks as his dog’s eyeballs were pierced with long needles. Tony moaned.
“That’s him, Jim,” said Dr. Will. “Now we’ll just rub some of this alfalfa balm on him. And then I’ll stick in twenty more.”
Have you ever thought you’d like to go on a winter cruise but not with thousands of owly senior citizens grumping around the tropics? Join us for a cruise on the S.S. Burlington. Ten days sailing through the sparkling blue, sun-drenched Caribbean with people just like yourself: young, physically fit, thoughtful people. Vermonters. Readers. Not John Jakes’s readers or Danielle Steel’s or Stephen King’s. My readers. Such as you, for example. My kind of people. I am hoping to be there, and maybe we can stay up late talking and talking, just talk, me and you.
Starts at $4,500, double occupancy.
“We’ll have Tony put in a special place for blind dogs. There’s a beautiful one in Middlebury, a farm. It was donated by one of the Peabodys,” Mom said. “He’ll be happier there than with you, hard as that is to accept. He’ll run free through the meadows and the forests, and you’ll go away to Yale soon, honey, and life will be good for both of you.”
“You’re lying. You’re going to have him killed in a gas chamber!”
“I promise you that Tony will be sent to a training center for seeing-impaired dogs, where he will learn to work with a seeing-eye bird and lead a life that is almost normal. They use canaries that sit on the dog’s shoulder and hold in their beak long reins attached to the dewlaps.”
Jim looked down at his poor old pal; a bandage covered Tony’s head except for his dry, brown nose and big, floppy ears and slobbery lips. A bandage very poorly wrapped, he couldn’t help but notice. Tape slapped on, the way a post-office clerk would do it. Downstairs. Dr. Will was hobnobbing with the other guests over steaming mugs of hot cider. The house rang with the careless melodious laughter of the well-to-do. “Dinner is free-range swine. It’s delicious. Why don’t you join us?” his mom said. But Jim couldn’t leave Tony.
Or could he? Dinner sure sounded good to him, and maybe Mom was right; you can’t live a dog’s life for him, can you. A blindy like this one, he’d have to learn how to depend on himself and not expect favors. Lots of blind dogs nowadays just lie around getting fat and lazy probably. That’s a rather poor attitude. Maybe he ought to leave Tony and go downstairs and talk to Dr. Will and the other influential guests, in hopes of garnering recommendations for future employment, graduate school, etc. Maybe he ought to ignore Tony completely, so as to make him less emotionally dependent.
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ANTIQUE COPPER BATHTUB. This finely crafted copy of a nineteenth-century Vermont tub, with filigreed edging, turtle-claw feet, and inscription on base, can be used for bathing, or to store firewood, or simply as a work of art. 52 × 28 × 36: $2,800.
PINE BRIEFCASE. Handcrafted with brass handles, quilted lining, and carved folk figures all over, this beauty is patterned after those used by lawyers in rural Vermont, and its investment value is well proven: $18,500.
I’d just like to close with a big thank-you to Bert&Willy’s and wish a Merry Christmas to their happy employees and express my sincere thanks to those who gave so generously to support my writing program and wish bon voyage to the folks on our cruise (I can’t get away to join you, sorry!) and thank the customers of the Christmas Catalogue. Allow eight weeks for delivery. Tony, by the way, went to the blind-dog farm, and Jim’s family was pulled together by the crisis and learned the true meaning of Christmas, which is not how much but how well. It’s a time for quality of life. Jim is headed for college, aiming for a career in theology, and Sharon split up with Vince, who was a brute even if he was instrumental in the revival of New England ceramics, and—how can I say this?—she is marrying me on Wednesday morning. It was a whirlwind romance, and after a honeymoon on St. Bart’s we’ll be home in Plainfield in our eighteen-room redwood cabin on the edge of a ten-thousand-acre wildlife preserve. A person could retire there and never be seen again.
NORMAN CONQUEST
e filled the electric teakettle, ground the beans, boiled the water, set the filter in the cone in the carafe, poured the water through the coffee, and all the time he was reading a scary article in the Register that said sleeping near an electric socket may cause depression, among other things. It quoted a Dr. Denton, who described four people who’d been miserable for years and years and then went on long camping trips, felt better, and finally figured out what sleeping near sockets had done to them.
The doctor said that some people recommended sleeping ten feet away from sockets, some said fifty, and others felt that a quarter-mile would not be too far.
Norman’s bed was within four feet of three sockets. Evidently, the person who designed this little bungalow was someone who needed appliances in the bedroom. Is this socket business silly? he wondered, and yet he had been a little depressed. He was depressed right now.
The article jumped to page 24, talking about Garth M., a cancer counselor who moved from his heavily socketed apartment into a teepee outside of Pittsburgh and hasn’t had a smidge of depression for almost three years—and in the adjoining column was a tiny obituary for a man of forty-four, six years younger than Norman, who conked out at a tennis club. Heart attack. A passerby attempted to revive him mouth-to-mouth but no soap. No wife listed, only the dead guy’s kids, Amber, Trevor, Kimberley, and Josh. A divorced guy. Norman had been divorced from his late wife Judy, and their daughter’s name is Kimberley, her boyfriend’s name is Trevor. The dead guy had been scheduled to fly to Maui the next day, the story said, for a vacation. Norman guessed the dead guy probably had a girlfriend—who would go to Maui alone?—probably a thirty-one-year-old teacher, trim, tan, a terrific tennis player, a woman who made the dead guy forget all his troubles. How nice for him. Norman had nobody. He was as celibate as the Pope. He wondered if electric sockets kill your sex drive too.
Suspicion of sockets seemed like a big price to pay for reading a newspaper, but the paper had been there on the doorstep and he didn’t want it to blow away down the block, forty pages flapping across the snowy yards of East Des Moines, and now he’d opened it and out came a barrel of trash to fill up his mind. A story about a boy named Jojo in Baraboo who dropped a yoyo down his tuba. A story about a boy who killed his father with a mallet and put him through a food processor. A story about America in the year 2010, a land of ashes and dead trees, cities boarded up, Americans with hair on their palms, illiterate, cancerous, gloomy as bears, breathing the acrid fumes of strange chemicals.
The house feels tired, even the furniture exhausted from old marital battles, the old green sofa looks like it has been awake sobbing all night
. Norman’s cleaning lady Carmelita quit in November and returned to Guatemala and now it is January. He is economizing. He is living on rice and beans, seeing no movies, hiring no cleaning ladies, buying no clothes or books, no alcohol. Norman, a lover of Laphroaig whiskey and old port and Armagnac, is being a good soldier, staying off the sauce while he finishes his novel.
It’s entitled The Big Box. A man is afraid to leave his house and he establishes a relationship with his refrigerator. So far there are four hundred pages in Norman’s computer and every day he deletes whole slabs and yet it keeps growing.
Norman was a freelance humorist for twenty years until starting this book. Judy supported him, working as a veterinarian’s assistant, as Norman found a market for his humor among the thousands of specialty magazines such as American Power Tool Quarterly and The National Geographic Collectors’ Magazine and Plastic Purse Collector and Walleye Fisherman and Rolodex Owner and Decaffeinated Coffee and Heating, Ventilating, Air-Conditioning Contractors’ Digest. And gradually he prospered, through hard work and plagiarism and the judicious use of boogers, hairballs, gerbils, chickens, and farts, the surefire laugh-getters. He prospered to where he was earning upwards of thirty-five thousand dollars a year.
Judy thought that his booger writing was trashy and sophomoric, but then she thought that about all his writing, whether it employed mucus or not. He had written a piece for Videocam about a man at his daughter’s wedding who fishes around in his left nostril as the video camera scans the reception line and he hooks onto a major vein of snot, about a quart’s worth, as the groom’s grandma approaches him, and of course the quart of snot is sitting in his right hand—it was a passage so funny, people practically crapped in their pants, they banged their heads on the breakfast table and fell over wheezing, but to Judy, it was another in the string of strange embarrassments that was their marriage. Judy had, while Norman wrote about boogers, put herself through veterinary college and graduate school and become the leading bovine periodontist in the country, which was to say the top cow-gum doctor in the world, flying off to bovine conferences in Bombay and Copenhagen and Buenos Aires and Cairo. A cow is a chewing machine, and good gums are crucial, and Judy earned $180,000 in 1992. “People ask me what you do,” she told Norman, “and I say you’re a writer, but I don’t say what. I wish you’d write a novel.”
The Book of Guys Page 22