by David Gates
So here we go: five movements, five sets of variations on five lines of text, word for word from Ted Williams: The Biography of an American Hero.
1. The plan is to live on the big boat.
2. I made a mistake. I need a lawyer.
3. You know who did this to me? Jesus Christ did this to me!
4. You’re the abortion I wanted—how do you say that to your son?
5. At the damn gate of the park, where we always meet.
Don’t you like the little story it tells? I had to chuck out the stuff that inspired me in the first place—Cocksucking fucken syphilitic Jesus and whatnot. Let Roberto Loomis be the Rebel Angel and take up a flaming sword against the Disapprovers. According to the biography, some nurse said that Williams, on his deathbed, finally came to know Jesus was his savior. I thought the third movement was the place for the Wagnerian Jesus drama, then the death-metal family angst in four and finally, in five, the Meeting at the Gate—or the Parting at the Gate, however you want to read it—in pastoral quietude.
So I await my judgment: was I father enough to Roberto Loomis at least? As for you, whom I’ve been trying to sweet-talk this whole time, I get the feeling there’s nobody here anymore. I will have done my important work: you have to picture the hand coming out from under the lid. I drank too much—that is, I drank—though Deborah (as I said) had developed a little problem herself. And I got lost in listening, for which one has to be grateful. Clearly I’ve worked up this farewell aria with some care, but—and here comes the final cadence—I’m going to let you have the last word. Wasn’t I the shit back then?
Desecrators
While Fran was in the bathroom, Cal told Cammy one more time that he’d have his cell with him and that if anything at all—Okay, Daddy, okay. Fran came out with fresh lipstick. Cal slung his bag over his shoulder, kissed the lips lightly and he was out of there. In the lobby, Hector asked if he wanted a cab; he said no thanks and stepped out into sunshine. Hot for October. So at the Hertz place on Seventy-Seventh, he chose the convertible over the SUV—shit, let’s go for piggy and slinky—and it arrived still dripping, long, low-slung, midnight blue.
He double-parked at the corner of Forty-Ninth and Tenth Avenue and got out his cell; better not to wait in front of Margaret’s building, even though the boyfriend was off reporting a story. Or that was the boyfriend’s story. Cal’s story was a Milton conference in Princeton, which he would tell Fran was so tedious he couldn’t even write the piece of mockery he’d had in mind. Margaret must’ve had a story too. They’d fucked the first time on Tuesday afternoon, her place, the boyfriend ninety-nine-point-nine percent certain not to come home early. So a weekend had been a must. This weekend had been a must.
She came around the corner wearing sunglasses and a Dodgers cap, bag over her shoulder, cigarette pack rolled into the sleeve of her white T-shirt. Cal got out and said, “Welcome to my midlife Chrysler.”
“I’m impressed,” she said.
“With the car?” he said. “Or the jeu d’esprit?”
“The car,” she said. “I told you I was a simple girl.”
He put her bag in, slammed the trunk, then looked her over good. “We like the nips,” he said.
“What, these?” She looked down, grabbed a handful of T-shirt on each side and pulled it tighter. “Externals,” she said. “Can we have the top down?”
“I won’t say the obvious,” he said. She reached for her door handle, but he thumbed the button on the key ring, the headlights flashed and the locks snapped shut. “You haven’t greeted me properly.”
She looked behind her, said, “Yeah, fuck it,” stepped to him, took hold of his ass and pulled him into her. Her tongue on the roof of his mouth, right back to the soft palate. Fingernails in his neck.
“Jesus,” he said. “Who taught you the password?”
“Come on, you’re easy to read.” But she was breathing hard too. “Like Nancy Drew.” She stepped back. “Okay, so Nancy gets accepted to art school, goes into class with her pencil and stuff, and there’s Ned Nickerson sitting there on the podium with all his clothes off and his dick standing straight up. So what did she do?”
Cal thought, then nodded. “Got it.”
“I put the dick in to throw you off,” she said.
“I won’t say the obvious,” he said. “No, actually I won’t say that.”
—
Cal had been circling Margaret all year—and getting signals back: he wasn’t that much of an asshole. She was the best of the writers he’d inherited. His first week, she covered a drive-through Christmas-lights festival in Pennsylvania. He asked her out for coffee and said it was a waste for her to keep writing for the Bottom Feeder section. Sure, she’d said: that was why she did it.
Naturally he’d gone back and read the stuff she’d done for Lingua Franca and Nerve. The Nerve piece was just a riff about an ex-boyfriend and gave away nothing about her own sexual stuff. But her name for the guy—Dick Minim—came from what, the Rambler? (He looked it up: the Idler.) So how could you not want to do her? According to Nancy, the managing editor, she had a history with married men but had lately moved in with some guy her own age. “So I gather you’re into Johnson,” he’d said as the waiter set down their coffees. “What girl isn’t?” she’d said.
—
He looked over at her profile, chin out like Mussolini, as she lit a cigarette: American Spirits in the yellow. “You mind? I’m down to three a day.”
“Do it,” he said.
“I promised myself that if I couldn’t keep it to three I’d just quit.”
“And that’s working?”
“So far. This is the first day. It would be nice not to end up like my father.” She blew smoke up and away. “Actually, you know what this car could use? One of those crown things on the dashboard. With the air freshener?”
“Yeah, speaking of fresh, do you know yet what you’re giving us for next week?”
She blew out smoke again. “Not really. Maybe the Christian board games. That or toilet-paper tots. You know, on the wrappers?”
“Yes,” he said. “That. Now that is unwholesome. That little girl with the eyes? Done deal.”
“So,” she said, “you’re not at all freaked out about this, right?” Another drag of cigarette.
“Why, are you?”
“So-so. You know, I’m theoretically in this appropriate relationship.”
“I think I’ve just been called old,” he said.
“And of course these things always end so well,” she said. “So why did the blonde go to Mass?”
“Hmmm,” he said. “Mass as in, not Massachusetts. Okay.”
“Because she heard they had a guy there who was hung like that.” Cupped her hands, spread her arms.
They stopped at the first service area so she could pee and check out the crap in the gift shop. People coming out: three white boys with backward caps and baggy jeans ending mid-shin; a fat woman in skin-tight burgundy pants, with a foot-tall cup of soda, dragging her scrawny daughter by the hand; an ex-Marine-looking geezer with white crew cut and I ♥ MY GRANDCHILDREN T-shirt. “This is so Fellini.” She put both hands around his upper arm. “Thank you for bringing me.”
“Sheer self-interest,” he said. A pudgy couple came rolling toward them, holding hands, in matching plaid Bermudas: he in a bulging knit shirt, she in a bulging Old Navy T-shirt. “That, on the other hand, has to be true love.”
“You are completely evil,” she said. “I want your cock in my mouth.”
“Here and now?” he said. “Or just on principle?”
—
Their cabin was to have a deck overlooking the lake. The view was prominent in the pictures on the website: green trees and blue water in some; in others, skiers kicking up a spray of snow. The guy on the phone told Cal this would be the best weekend for the leaves, and sure enough. As they drove north, the colors came on and it got too cold to keep the top down. Cal got a joint out of his cigarette case.
>
She guided him off the Northway onto the state road, then onto the county road, then onto the dirt road, then onto the dirt road they wanted, which ended at a log building with an OFFICE sign and antlers over the door. Inside, a grandfather clock was going Gonk gonk gonk gonk. The guy behind the counter—the same one as on the phone?—handed across a map of the trails and two key cards, imprinted with pine trees.
“We get stuff walking out of the rooms all the time,” he said. “Even up here in the boonies.” He had this fucked-up ear—looked like it had been burned off. “This you folks’ first time?”
“Second, actually,” Cal said. Margaret kicked his ankle.
“Well. Good to have you back.”
“We’ve been looking forward to it,” Cal said.
They drove up to their cabin, from which no other cabin could be seen: another selling point. Cal set their bags on the doorstep and stuck his card in the slot.
“I love this,” Margaret said. Gleaming log walls and a white chenille bedspread on a queen-size brass bed; a blue-enameled woodstove, quarter-split birch chunks in the woodbox. Smell of actual woodsmoke.
Cal opened the sliding door and they walked out onto the deck: good, okay, a still-green meadow sloping down to the blue lake. On the far shore, a red, yellow and orange forest, and slim white birch trunks in among the evergreens. Behind all this, an isosceles mountain. “Check it out,” he said. “An Adirondack.”
“What do you think happened to him?” she said.
“To?”
“Didn’t you see his ear?”
“Oh. Can’t imagine. Listen, I think I left the wherewithal in the car. Why don’t you start getting us settled in. This place needs the woman’s touch.”
“As soon as I unpack,” she said, “I’ll go out and pick a frisson of hysteria.”
—
Cal got behind the wheel, shut the door and took out his phone. It said Searching…then locked in. He looked out the windshield at this tree, then that tree, then that tree: Which one was the signal tower in disguise? He tried the apartment, got the machine, tried the cell.
“God, it took you forever,” Fran said. “What’s it like?”
“Oh, you know. Oxonian. Faux Oxonian.”
“Did Il Pesce show up?” Stanley Fish was supposed to be on one of the panels.
“Haven’t seen him yet. People are still getting here.”
“He always makes me think of Cammy’s fish.” Cal had given her that mounted fish toy that writhes and sings “Take Me to the River.” A terrible lesson: never get high to go Christmas shopping. “God, speaking of which,” she said, “we’re right in front of Citarella? And I’m looking at this very dead and unhappy sea bass.”
“Ah. So is Cammy with you?”
“Yes, everything’s under control. Would you like to speak to her? She’s clamoring.”
Cammy’s voice: “I am not, I’m just—Daddy? Hi. We’re going to watch Amadeus again.”
“Ah,” he said. At least it had better music than Shakespeare in Love. “That should be fun. And Mommy’s okay?”
Margaret rapped a knuckle on the glass.
“Jumping Jesus,” he said. “Sorry, sweet, something just…” He held up his index finger. “No problems, right? I know you can’t really talk.”
“I don’t think so. But are you coming back tomorrow?” Margaret hefted a breast.
“Monday, actually,” he said. He did a Groucho Marx with his eyes at Margaret. “Listen, I should get going. You have my cell, so if you need me for any reason. Anyway. Enjoy that movie. May I have Mommy back for a second?”
“So,” Fran said, “are you reassured?”
“About?”
“Oh, please.”
“I’m not reassured, no,” he said. “This is just—you know, a weekend like all weekends.” Well, Hector and Antoine both knew to hold any packages for Fran until he was home, and they’d told the new guy who was on midnight to eight. “You guys take care of each other okay? I’d better go justify God’s ways to man.”
He pushed End and opened the door.
“Listen,” Margaret said, “my cell’s not working and I was supposed to call Morgan at, like, two o’clock.”
“God, covering your ass,” he said. “The curse of Adam.” He handed her the phone, reached across, opened the glove compartment and took out the cigarette case. “I’ve been obsessing about that. Like they’ve figured out that they’re naked, but they’re so new at it that they can’t just act like it’s okay. And God is totally fucking with them.” He pointed a finger that trembled in wrath. “ ‘And who tooooold you you were naked, hmm?’ ”
“Why are you obsessing about that?” Margaret said.
“Trying to reread Milton,” he said. “For this alleged piece. Which reminds me—I found out the story behind the ear.”
“Really.” She snapped the phone shut. “Do tell.”
“Seems our friend used to run this honeymoon resort in the Poconos, and he was a bit of a Norman Bates? So when God found out that he was bugging the rooms—”
“Oh, fuck you, Cal.”
“He sent His fire down from heaven—”
“Not funny.”
“Ah,” he said. “If her readers could hear her now.”
—
In graduate school, Cal had played with a band called the Desecrators, whose specialty was covering Dylan songs and changing the pronouns. They’d begin sets with “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” (“Take this badge off of him / He can’t use it anymore”) and close with “He and He.” Fran had majored in piano, though she’d soon given up on a concert career. She was amazed that Cal could just play with nothing written down; he was amazed that a real person could sit at a piano and out would come, say, a Chopin nocturne. He taught her to play eight-ball and to walk on the street with a can of beer in a paper bag, and he put her onto Dawn Powell years before Tim Page made a big deal out of it. He used to know Tim Page, actually, through a painter friend. And he gave her coke for the first time. The coke turned out to be not such a good idea.
When he finally got Fran to marry him, he quit the Ph.D. program and stopped playing music, like some Jane Austen lady who’d hooked a husband and no longer needed her accomplishments. He sold his guitars to come up with the two months plus a month’s security plus the fee on a three-bedroom at West End and 102nd. She got pregnant, sort of not accidentally, and they tossed a coin for whose study would be the baby’s room; she won, but gave it up anyway. Her piano students and the occasional accompanist gig hadn’t been bringing in much; he was writing a column he called Manufacturing Contempt for a weekly that people picked up for the listings and escort-service ads, plus stuff on the side for The Georgia Review. His template was Edmund Wilson. When Cammy was three, the weekly hired him as an editor, just in time for him to use his benefits for Fran’s first rehab. Now he’d taken over as number two at this online magazine, which had begun to break even; he could also write as little or as much as he wanted for a buck a word on top of his salary. He’d just bought a painting from the painter friend. His template now was James Wolcott. He could twist the knife, there was that to be said.
—
They took off their clothes, got under the covers and started a fresh joint. It was low-rent to relight a roach, like a cartoon bum smoking a cigarette butt impaled on a pin. Fran’s deal as opposed to Margaret’s was not to show her body unless they were quote being sexual: that was hotter in the long run, though this with Margaret was also hotter. The inside of Fran’s cunt was slickly muscular, Margaret’s more mooshy—even rubbered up, you could feel it—though you’d expect the opposite, for some reason he couldn’t articulate. Fran came louder, but Margaret more, with these fluttering contractions up inside. When he judged that she’d come enough, he started up the hill himself, got snagged thinking about the Hill Difficulty in The Pilgrim’s Progress, then broke through into the world of light.
After a long enough time for it not to seem coldhearted,
he rolled away, slid the condom off and wrapped it in bedside Kleenex. Then back shoulder to shoulder, thinking up the first thing to say. Any first thing said must of necessity be stupid, yet sooner or later one or the other of them would have to break the silence. Would it not be Christ-like to take the stupidity upon himself?
“So would you have contempt for me,” he said, “if this turned out to make me a better husband?”
“What?” she said. “Oh.” She rolled onto her side, away from him. “Sorry, I’d been forgetting the context. Do you want your Zagat rating? Morgan’s in better shape than you, but you’re a little better as a fuck. More calculating, you know? Like trying to figure me out. It makes you seem mean.”
“Huh,” he said. “I would’ve thought solicitous.”
“No, mean is good,” she said.
“But at any rate,” he said, “not a mercy fuck.”
“I doubt that mercy comes into this.” She rolled onto her back and looked up at the ceiling. “I feel sorry for that man.”
“That man,” Cal said. “Oh—right. The guy.”
They started yet another joint and settled back on their pillows. But they’d smoked so much by now that it just wasn’t doing it. She reached over. Handled him awhile, then got her mouth down.
“Hmm,” he said. “This may be a lit-tle premature. Given that I’m no longer twenty-one. No longer forty-one.”
She popped him out, still limp—he imagined the sound of a festive champagne cork—and said, “I don’t believe in the soft bigotry of low expectations.”
By the time they got out of bed, the sun had gone down. Cal stepped onto the deck, T-shirted and barefoot, and discovered the moon, full, its never-to-be-deciphered pattern of marks, not quite a face going Ooh but not quite not. Sharp chill on his arms: you could feel all of winter compacted inside it, like a Zip file.