“We’re starving, Mom,” Clayton said. “Can we have two sandwiches each today?”
“How are you ever going to lose any weight, Clayton?” Mrs. Parker said. “You eat all the time and you don’t get any exercise. You don’t go out for a single sport.”
“I’m going out for football next year,” Clayton said.
Mrs. Parker raised her face to laugh. The shelf of her bosom heaved up and down. “Do you think I believe that nonsense?” She looked at me. “Gabriel, are you ill? You don’t look well today.”
“I’m not very hungry all of a sudden, Mrs. Parker.”
Clayton glared at me. “He just told me he was starved!”
“Does Clayton eat the food I give you?” Mrs. Parker asked.
“No, ma’am. I eat it. I’m usually hungry.”
“Maybe you let yourself get too hungry this time,” she said. “That can happen. Eat your lunch and see if you don’t feel better.” She completed our sandwiches with mustard and lettuce leaves, and turned them over to us in waxed paper bags.
I looked back at her longingly as Clayton dragged me away. We left the kitchens and ran through the tunnels till we were under the building where the chambermaids had their headquarters. Clayton knew all the women who cleaned at the asylum; they lived in the workers’ barracks, too. Two maids, Margaret and Shirley, were on the sofa in the lunchroom when we ran in.
“We’re putting on a play in school!” Clayton told them. “Can we get some of those old clothes you have? For costumes for it?”
“You never acted in any play, Clayton,” Margaret said, her dark, white-stockinged legs crossed on the sofa, cigarette smoke coming out of her nose. “Besides, we don’t have no clothes to fit you.”
“No, it’s older kids acting in it,” he said.
“What kind of play?” she asked me.
“It’s kind of about the roaring twenties,” I said.
“I like that,” said Shirley. “What characters you looking for?”
“Men,” I said.
“I know that! What kind of mens?”
“A tycoon and a politician,” said Clayton.
Margaret and Shirley seemed dazzled by the idea of characters like that. We followed them to big canvas hampers full of patients’ unclaimed clothes. They pawed through the bins until a musty miasma filled the small back room we were in. When they were finished we had two whole outfits, a winter one and a summer one—jackets, pants, shirts and socks, two old-fashioned pairs of shoes. There was even a hat, a brown fedora hat. The women put it all into a paper shopping bag.
“Hey, when is this play?” Margaret called as we ran away down the stairs.
“Don’t know yet!” Clayton called back. “We’ll get you tickets!”
“You better, Clayton Parker!” she cried.
We went back underground and resurfaced at the hospital store. The goods in this store were subsidized by the mysterious entity of the state. You could get cakes and candy for a penny, soda for a nickel, whole packs of cigarettes for a dime. I always bought treats there for Clayton and myself. This time he wanted to do the buying, and asked for money before we went in. He got soda and corn chips and candy bars, and brought them to the counter. “Two packs of Luckies for my pop,” he said to the clerk.
At the phone booth outside, he dropped in one of my dimes and dialed my number. Clayton knew that my mother made a regular Saturday trip to town, and with this knowledge he had conceived a plan. I tried to tell him it was crazy, that it wouldn’t work, but he wouldn’t listen, and so I got on the phone with my mother and asked her to stop and pick us up on her way.
Luther poked his head out from behind a tree as we crunched into his hiding place in the woods. When he was sure we were alone he scrambled out. “Look what my mates have brought me!” he said when he saw the shopping bag slapping Clayton’s leg. “Good work, my young princes!” He sat on the fallen trunk of a tree and wolfed a baloney sandwich while Clayton told him the plan.
Fear was closing off my throat so that I could hardly breathe. I kept looking at my watch. “She’ll be here in less than half an hour,” I said.
“What about money?” Luther said.
“He has money,” Clayton said.
I had fifteen dollars left in my wallet, saved from my allowance over the winter. I said I had ten, and that much I turned over to Luther.
“Good boy,” he said.
“I want something in return for that money.”
He dragged heavily on a cigarette. “What?”
“I want to know if you’re crazy. If you’re really insane.”
He blew smoke at the asylum. “They think I am.”
“What do you think?”
“I think they’re right.”
“Was your father crazy?”
“Yup.”
“How about his father?”
“Same.”
“See?” Clayton said.
“That’s what you wanted to know?” said Luther.
“Not really,” I said.
I stood by the side of the road above the cinder pit and watched for my mother. Her blue station wagon appeared in the distance. I thought of the many times I’d ridden that stretch of road in that very car. This was how the patients saw me coming, I thought, and for a strange moment I felt like a patient myself. My mother pulled onto the shoulder beside me. “You’ve been in that pit again,” she said, but kindly, because she loved me no matter what I did.
A pathetically false smile possessed my face. “Mom, could Clayton’s uncle catch a ride to town, too?”
“Clayton’s uncle?” she said. “Doesn’t he have a car of his own?”
I wasn’t prepared for this question. If a man wants a ride to town, doesn’t that imply he has no car? I stood there stupidly, certain she knew I was up to something, until she looked behind me and smiled.
“Hello, Clayton,” she said.
“Hi, Mrs. V.,” he said. “My uncle has a car, but it’s not here. He lives in Philadelphia. He’s been visiting us. We would’ve called a cab to the train, but Gabriel said you were coming this way anyway.”
“It’s fine, Clayton,” my mother said. “Where is he?”
Clayton affected great embarrassment, flapping his arms and covering his eyes. “Let me check on him,” he said, and ran down the overgrown slope beside the cinder cliff.
“I guess he stepped into the woods,” I said.
“What for?” my mother asked.
I looked up at the sky. “I guess to go to the bathroom, Mom.”
She lowered her eyes at the dashboard. “Oh, I see,” she said.
In a few minutes, Clayton and Luther clambered up the embankment. Luther was wearing the heavy brown tweed suit. It was the hottest day of the spring so far, probably eighty degrees. I couldn’t imagine why Luther had chosen the winter clothes. Then I remembered: he was crazy. He carried the half-empty paper shopping bag and held himself elegantly erect.
“Mrs. V.,” said Clayton, “this is my Uncle Luther.”
“Pleased to meet you, Luther,” my mother said.
“Ma’am,” said Luther, taking off the brown fedora and bowing from the waist beside her driver’s window.
Something I hadn’t realized about Luther in the open air became intensely clear when we were all in the car. He smelled bad. He smelled, in fact, like an asylum patient, and there was no mistaking or ignoring it. My mother looked over at me in the passenger seat. I never saw her smile more insincerely. She rolled her driver’s window down. “Let me know if that’s too much air for you, Luther,” she said, pulling out onto the road.
“I like air,” Luther said.
“And no wonder,” my mother said. “You’re overdressed for this weather.”
I poked her thigh as if to say, Jesus, Mom, they’re poor. Those are probably the only nice clothes he has. I saw her catch my meaning.
“Did you enjoy your visit?” she said.
“Yes’m,” Luther said. “Didn’t expect to st
ay quite as long as I did.”
“Family visits can just go on and on, can’t they?” My mother laughed.
“Yes’m, they sure can.”
We drove past the well-kept older homes on the shady road between the asylum and town. I wondered what Clayton and Luther thought when they saw places like that. The town was a village, really, and just as it began there were two big stone churches, Lutheran and Episcopalian, one on either side of the road. They were churches from an earlier time, cathedrals com pared to the modern Catholic one my family attended, a depressing brick rectangle next to a filling station.
Luther ogled the Episcopalian church, pressing his forehead against the car window and gaping at the ivy-covered stone and the mythic figures portrayed in stained glass. I braced myself to hear him claim to be Jesus or one of those colorful saints, but he didn’t say anything.
The train station was at the beginning of town, before the stores began. The maroon-and-silver train was sitting there. My mother pulled in and the three of us got out. “Thanks for the ride, Mrs. V.,” Clayton called to my mother in the car. “See you, Gabe,” he said to me, and winked.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “Where are you going?”
“To Philadelphia with my Uncle Luther.”
“What are you talking about, Clayton?” I whispered.
“You knew I was going,” he said loudly, so my mother could hear. “I told you that.”
“No, you did not tell me that.”
Luther doffed his hat for my mother again and backed away. I started to follow after them.
“Gabriel, come on,” my mother said. “You can say goodbye to Clayton here. How long are you going for, Clayton?”
“Two or three days,” he said.
“You can survive without Clayton for a couple of days,” my mother said to me, and I got back into the car.
For a half hour I trailed behind her through the stores. I didn’t want candy or comic books or any of the things I’d always wanted in town before. When we drove out, the train was gone. I controlled myself all the way back to the asylum, certain I would see Clayton walking home by himself on the side of the road. But I didn’t. On the ride up our mountain, I broke down and told my mother everything. She didn’t believe it. She called Mrs. Parker, who didn’t believe it, either. I was sent up to my room while she called my father at work. I looked out my window, but I couldn’t see the asylum buildings below us or New York City on the horizon; the trees were already green enough to screen that all out. When my father got home, his low voice resonated through the house exactly as I imagined the voice of a Jersey state trooper—a terrifying sound bereft of animation or joy.
He called me downstairs and I told him what we’d done. He didn’t hit me—my mother didn’t allow hitting in our house—but he didn’t have to hit; when I was finished, he turned his back on me and walked away. I returned to my room upstairs, where I deciphered enough muffled words to gather that he was calling the police, and that Luther and Clayton would have a reception when they arrived in Philadelphia.
The next day was Sunday and my father told me to dress up and get in the car. I’d made my Confirmation the previous fall, and now that I was a man it was supposed to be my decision whether to continue worshipping or not. I had decided against it, and hadn’t been in the church since Confirmation day. I would have to begin my confession with this information and then go on to my secular sins. I rode down the mountain nearly faint with dread. But instead of taking me to town, my father pulled into the asylum grounds, drove to the workers’ barracks, and parked. I didn’t know he even knew where the workers’ barracks were. I thought the asylum part of my life was separate from him. He was bringing me to apologize to Clayton’s mother and father.
“But the whole thing was Clayton’s idea,” I said.
“Get in there,” he said.
Mrs. Parker answered the door when I knocked. She was wearing a fancy dress and stockings and shoes. She motioned for me to step inside. Mr. Parker stood in their little living room in a suit and tie; he looked at me, but his face was utterly blank. The four girls sat on the sofa in dresses, with bows in their hair. I didn’t understand what was going on. Then I realized that they’d been to church themselves, or were about to go. I’d never seen Mr. and Mrs. Parker dressed as anything but a cook and a grounds keeper, and seeing them now in their Sunday clothes staggered me. I started to cry. When I stopped, Mrs. Parker told me that she and Mr. Parker had had to plead for their very jobs after what Clayton and I had done.
“I’m really sorry, Mr. and Missus Parker. I apologize,” I said, sniffling and backing away, but Mrs. Parker took hold of my arm. Clayton had asked to see me, she said. “He knew I was coming?” I asked.
“Your father called us,” she said, and she led me to Clayton’s bedroom door.
He lay on the bed in his tiny, dim room, the only one of us not wearing Sunday clothes. His lips were cut and his cheeks were swollen, and his blackened eyes were puffy slits.
“Well, look who’s here,” Clayton said. His rubbery words were hard to understand. “Nice, huh?” he added, indicating his face.
I couldn’t think of anything to say. “I’m sorry, Clayton,” I whispered finally. “I got scared something would happen to you.”
“So you made sure something did.”
“No, I didn’t. I didn’t make sure of anything. I was worried, that’s all.”
“You’re always worried about something,” he said. “You are such a mama’s boy.” He sat halfway up on his bed. “What were you worried about this time, Gabe? That I was gonna ride the train for a few hours and then go home? Big deal. You never rode a train before?”
In fact, I had never been on a train. “My parents always had cars,” I said.
Clayton flopped back down on his bed and laughed.
“What’s so funny about that?”
He laughed until I thought he was crying. “I don’t know,” he said between spasms. “It’s just so funny. Your parents always had cars.”
“I can’t do anything about the way my family lives,” I said.
He didn’t answer me. I took a step or two farther into his room.
“Hey, Clayton, listen,” I said. “When this all blows over, we can go to the pit and you can push me off the high part. You can push me off as many times as you want.”
“I don’t think so, Gabe,” he answered without looking at me. “I don’t think we’ll be going there anymore,” he said, and we never did.
THIS IS A NATURAL PRODUCT OF THE EARTH
The Transamerica pyramid was even more fantastical in life than in the pictures of it Raymond had seen, a dagger thrust from the center of the earth in the name of life insurance, and as he crossed the Bay Bridge, the entire city delighted him, sliding over his windshield in the sun. San Francisco’s exotic face spoke to Raymond, saying he’d done the right thing when he moved to California two weeks ago. Maybe, when he and Christine had some money, they could move up here from San Jose. He followed Mary’s instructions into Berkeley, parked the car, and walked up onto Telegraph Avenue. They were supposed to meet in front of Cody’s famous bookshop—it was easier than her trying to explain on the phone how to get up to her house in the Berkeley hills—and when he arrived, late, she was waiting for him. But he didn’t realize it. He stood on the comer for five minutes, looking back and forth between the rollerskaters in the street and the books in Cody’s window. Finally, a woman at a magazine stand walked over and kissed his cheek.
“I thought this might happen.” She laughed.
He was too stunned to laugh himself. In Boston six years before, Mary’s hair had been short and straight, bluntly cut into a helmet by herself at home. Now it was down to her shoulders and permed into cascades of bouncy ringlets. Her disdain for fashion had been complete, but today she was wearing a red silk dress and red leather pumps, makeup on her eyes, and a grapey color on her lips. She looked great—sexy, if you could still say that—but she didn’t
look like Mary.
“He finally shows up in California,” she said. “But what’s this strange taboo against visiting people? You had to wait until you moved out here?”
Raymond’s never having been off the East Coast was one of their standing jokes. In every letter, and the yearly phone calls on their birthdays, Mary insisted that he come out and see the marvelous West. He could stay with her as long as he liked, she always said, and the girlfriend was welcome, too. Every year Raymond said he would, and every year he didn’t.
And now he actually lived here—with Christine, his girlfriend, who was attending the Stanford Business School. He had a new job with a Silicon Valley importer of high-end computers from Japan, turning painful documentation (“Activate vector object and transform to specified output”) into plainspoken user’s guides (“Click on the thick line and then choose an item from the ‘Output’ menu”). For the past four or five years—most of the time since he’d last seen Mary—he’d done similar technical writing for outfits on Route 128 around Boston. He never could have predicted this career for himself, but he was surprisingly satisfied doing it. Most people in the industry were decent folks, and he liked to play with hardware. On some level it engaged his soul.
“You could have come out here years ago and been a West Coast saxophone player,” Mary said. “This is a great place to be a musician.”
Raymond only laughed—he’d heard this so many times. Trying to be a jazz musician was what he’d been doing when he and Mary knew each other in Boston. He worked in a photocopy shop on Boylston Street and practiced at night, jammed with music students, played an occasional gig. But he was twenty-seven with a master’s in English, and Boston was crawling with eighteen-year-olds who’d never done anything but play saxophone. Nothing mattered to those kids except the horn, and in the end Raymond saw that he’d never be obsessed enough to live that life.
Make Me Work Page 13