by Sol Stein
“I’ll have a look around if you sports don’t mind.”
“Great, Mom,” Stanley said. “Dad and I can have a beer.”
So Margaret went off, while father and son settled themselves at a sun-shaded table in an outdoor café.
“I’ll be back in twenty minutes,” Margaret cried from a distance. People turned to look at her.
“Take your time,” Henry said, but she was now too far to hear. Henry, for it was his nature to do so, wondered for a moment what their lives would be like if Margaret did not return. There would be a search, an investigation, nothing. Hundreds of people disappeared that way each year.
“Your mother,” he said to Stanley, “enjoys shopping more than anyone I know.”
“You might as well enjoy what you have to do.”
“No, no,” Henry said, “I’m not talking about necessities. It’s her way of making up for the past.”
“Because Grandpa was so poor.”
“You got it. She even enjoys window shopping, she says, because she knows she can buy what she’s looking at.”
“I’m glad you two like each other,” Stanley said.
“What makes you think that?”
“It shows. Dad, it’s real neat having you both visit.” He nodded his head several times the way young people sometimes did.
His son, Henry thought, had evolved into an interesting looking young man, with Margaret’s best facial features. And yet one could easily see Henry in his son. Wonder where the reddish glint in the hair came from? Margaret’s mother? Wonder if it’s the sun out here?
“It’s good to be here,” Henry said. “I’m really pleased about the courtesy.”
“I wanted to meet you.”
“I mean the tennis.”
“De nada,” Stanley said.
“You pick up a bit of Spanish out here?”
“Picked that up from Hemingway. Didn’t you ever read Hemingway, Dad?”
Henry was tempted to say before you were born. Henry let some silence settle between them so that Stanley could organize whatever it was that he had in mind.
“Pop,” he said finally in a form of address he always reserved for moments of feeling, “I’ve been hit.”
“What does that mean?”
“A girl.”
“A friend? How nice.”
“I’ve got lots of friends, you know, fellows I hang around with, and girls I see. This is different.”
“Not like Marjorie what’s-her-name?”
“No,” said Stanley. “Not like any of the others.”
“Tell me about her.”
“Actually, I met her when I was on line for registration. She was in front of me and I asked her a dumb question.”
“What kind of dumb question?”
“I don’t recall, but I remember she turned around—she is just sensational-looking—and said, ‘That’s a dumb question.’”
Henry had to laugh.
“Pop, I have been seeing her every day.”
“I hope it’s not interfering with your studies too much.”
“Yes and no. I think about her when she’s not there, you know what I mean?”
“Has she got a name?”
“Yeah, sure, I’m sorry. Her name’s Kathy. They call her Kathy Brown.”
“That’s a coincidence!”
“No, no, that’s not her name, just what they call her. The guys here have a thing—if a girl’s going sort of steady with a fellow they call her by his last name. It usually makes the girls mad.”
“I can imagine.”
“That’s why they do it. Kathy doesn’t mind too much.”
“You haven’t done anything hasty, I hope.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look, Stanley, you haven’t secretly gotten married or something. Mother would…”
“No, no, Pop, it’s just a thing with the name. Wait’ll you meet her. She’s into ballet, and she likes the same music I do, and we like being together. Pop, I’m in trouble.”
Henry thought abortion.
“You need money?”
Stanley nodded uncomfortably. “Sort of.”
“How much is sort of?”
“Sixty bucks. Please?”
“That’s outrageous.”
“I don’t want you to get angry.”
“I’m not angry. What kind of medical attention do you think she’ll get for sixty dollars? It’s got to be a first-rate hospital and a first-rate doctor. You have…”
He stopped because Stanley was laughing.
“Oh Pop, not that. It’s just, well, I buy her presents, little things. She used to refuse them, but I have to buy them even if I can’t squeeze it out of my allowance. I take her to different restaurants. It’s like an insane thing, a compulsion.”
First love, thought Henry, remembering.
“I borrowed sixty from two guys to cover myself and I’ve got to return it. I’d rather owe the money to you. I promise to pay it back out of summer work.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m writing an I.O.U. on the napkin.”
“You don’t need to do that.”
“It’s in case I forget.”
“I’d rather you remembered.”
Henry took three twenties from his wallet, folded them twice, and handed them to his son.
“Thanks, Dad.”
“I know how irrational love can be. And how expensive. Just don’t do anything rash like getting married without at least talking about it first.”
“Not too many people get married just like that, Dad.” He put the still-folded bills into his wallet stuffed with papers and crammed the billfold into his jeans.
“Will we meet Kathy?”
“She’s got classes Tuesday morning, but I had an idea. You in a good mood?”
“Good mood,” Henry said. It was a ritual with them.
“We’re always talking about going down to Los Angeles. Kathy comes from there. We could fly down Friday after her class—PCA is real cheap—and we could all go out someplace together, she knows the spots, and then I could meet her family, that sort of thing. All I’d need is like…”
“The air fare,” Henry volunteered.
“Just for me. Kathy pays her own way.”
“And some spending money?”
“A little,” Stanley said. “I’ll repay all of it out of my summer job.”
“Can you cash a traveler’s check at school?”
Stanley nodded, trying to contain his joy.
“This is a hundred. I’ll endorse it to you.”
“It’s too much,” Stanley said.
“I don’t have smaller ones,” Henry lied. “We’ll settle up in the summer, okay?”
“Dad, you are something. Thanks.” Just then Margaret came into view out of the ambling crowd, a bit breathless, her face touched with a blush of excitement.
Seeing her, Henry and Stanley both laughed. “What have you bought, Mom?”
“This place is fabulous,” Margaret said. “Not buying in a place like this is sinful.”
“You mean virtuous, Mom.”
“I know sin when I feel it,” Margaret said. “Take it from me, extreme virtue is a great sin.”
“I expected to see you carrying a lot of packages,” Henry said.
“Just looking,” Margaret replied as Henry paid the check, “except one little thing I bought for you. You know how you struggle over a dry cork when it breaks in the wine bottle. Well, they have this European shop—I guess it’s an American shop full of European gadgets—and they have a Swiss or a German twin corkscrew. It’s this tiny little thing”—she took it out of her purse—“and the way it works, it’s guaranteed to get a broken cork out. Aren’t you glad I looked around?”
Henry had once had a dream he was in a desert, dehydrated, parched, desperate for water, and had come across a bottle of wine, or water—he didn’t know which—lying at the foot of a large cactus. He remembered trying to get the cork o
ut of the bottle with his bare hands, which was impossible. He was going to die for want of a corkscrew. Had he told Margaret about that dream? He was certain he had not.
“Thank you,” he said to her. “It’s a marvelous present.”
“A little nothing,” Margaret said, and extended an elbow in the direction of each of her men. They went off arm in arm to inspect the temptations of Ghirardelli Square.
*
Later Henry seized an opportune moment to say, “Margaret, I’ve got a surprise. Stanley’s flying down to L.A. Friday. He’s got a friend who comes from there and they want to show us around a bit, isn’t that nice?”
“Your roommate?” Margaret asked.
“I wish she were,” Stanley said.
“I guess I automatically assumed a male friend,” Margaret said.
“I’m into girls, Mom,” Stanley said, and then laughed at the implication in his language. Stanley was glad his father and mother laughed, too. Some parents were impossible about things like that.
“Where are you staying in L.A.?” Stanley asked.
“Glad you reminded me,” Henry said. “The Beverly Hills was full when my travel agent checked from New York, but they advised me to call to see if there were any cancellations. Now we need, what, three rooms?”
“No, no thanks. Kathy’s parents, we’ll stay there.”
“While I’m thinking of it,” Henry said, “will you excuse me a minute?”
He made a credit card call. The man at the desk of the Beverly Hills was very polite, but said he wouldn’t know about cancellations till Thursday. “What are the chances?” Henry asked.
“Oh very good, Mr. Brown. There’re almost always some cancellations and you’re first in line.”
Henry reported on his conversation to Stanley and added, “I’ll call them from the Beachcomber in Santa Barbara Thursday, then I’ll phone you. If they have a cancellation, you and your friend get a drink at the Polo Lounge. If not, I’ll let you know where we’re registered.”
“You won’t forget to call?” Stanley asked.
“I always keep my promises,” Henry said, glancing at Margaret. “Especially if Mom reminds me.”
Stanley scribbled down a phone number. “You don’t have to get me on the hall phone anymore,” he said. “This is a private phone I share with my roommate.”
When darkness had descended on San Francisco, Stanley said, “Tomorrow’s my hectic day at school, but on Tuesday morning, when you come down, I’m okay.”
“Can we walk you to the bus station?” Henry asked.
“Afraid I’m going to hitch a ride?” Stanley said, glancing at his mother. “Honest, I was taking the bus back.”
They accompanied him to the bus station anyway. The next day the Browns took in the waterfront, ate lunch in Di Maggio’s, rode a cable car, crammed in as much as they could.
Tuesday morning they got up early, packed, checked out. Henry looked for the clerk who had checked them in. He was nowhere in sight.
They breakfasted on the road, arrived in Santa Cruz in time for father and son to play an hour’s tennis before the three of them went sightseeing on the spectacular Santa Cruz campus.
“You like California?” Henry asked his son.
“Are you kidding? This place is so beautiful I feel guilty.”
“Guilty about what?”
“It’s like a resort, not a school.”
“It’s simple,” Margaret said. “Paradise is a gestalt. It’s hard to concentrate on mundane particulars.”
“Like homework,” Stanley said.
I don’t belong in California, Henry thought. Young people in their twenties here acted as if they were still teenagers. So many of the young women one saw in the street looked like cocktail waitresses, the young men like beach attendants with dyed blond hair. Older men looked not mature but merely wrinkled, wizened by the sun, in need of prunes for regularity. Older women in California suffered from obtrusive cosmetics and arteriosclerotic opinions. What am I doing here, Henry thought. It was the natives who drove Kurtz insane.
Margaret gently put her thumbs on Henry’s eyelids. “Incipient melancholia,” she diagnosed. “Snap out of it. We don’t have any homework to do. We’re on vacation in Paradise.”
Henry put his hands on Stanley’s shoulders and said, “Take care of yourself. And kiss your mother. She doesn’t get kissed enough these days.”
*
Henry and Margaret stopped only briefly to inspect the waterfront in Monterey, then drove on to Carmel. There they checked into an idyllic motel that had groups of rooms at different levels, tiered to conform to the sloping ground. For an extra five dollars, Henry got a room on the topmost level with a splendid view of the Pacific. Margaret wouldn’t take time to unpack, and they were off exploring.
For dinner they searched out a small Italian restaurant a friend had told them about. They had spinace en brodo, fettucine verde, a bottle of Barolo, and shared a single zabaglione afterward.
“Spirits better?” Margaret asked, as they walked up the steeply inclined street, a bit light-headed from the Barolo.
He nodded. When Margaret had gotten ready for bed, she found him on one side, his hands under his cheek, fast asleep.
*
In the middle of the night Henry woke to the sound of angry thunder. He pulled the curtain to see lightning striking at the ocean. Would the squalls reach the land, which was dry as tinder?
He turned toward the bed to see if the noise had awakened Margaret, too, and discovered her writhing. Quickly, he woke her up. She sat up, hugging him.
He knew it had been her medical school dream. Dr. Tate giving her Charley, her own cadaver to work on. In the dream Charley screamed that he was alive, pleaded with her to restore his body to its original condition. The first time she had told Dr. Tate about her dream. He admonished her. “Doctors are scientists,” he said, “they are not supposed to dream.”
“Tate was an idiot,” Henry said. “The best doctors are dreamers.”
“A lot you know,” she said, still clasping him.
“Why now?” asked Henry.
“Probably the storm,” she said, though she wondered if that was really the reason.
*
They woke later than they’d planned, dressed more casually than they had for San Francisco, breakfasted in the coffee shop, sauntered around town, and took in the shop windows. Margaret was attracted by a scarf in a window, went in, looked at two or three dozen different ones, suddenly realized that Henry was not with her, and felt the familiar, momentary alarm. It wasn’t a phobia, she told herself. If she were ever to be separated from Henry, the worst would really happen. Their lives were too intertwined. She rejected the idea of widowhood as intolerable. Her private deal with her Maker was either she went first, or they had to go together. Margaret excused herself to the clerk, went quickly out, and immediately, with a wave of relief and a reprimand for her anxiety, saw Henry coming up the inclined sidewalk holding a single flower wrapped in green tissue.
It was midafternoon before they drove out of town to find Highway 1. They stopped at a lookout on the edge of the craggy cliffs that plummeted to the white-flecked breakers below.
“The weather around here is supposed to be the most perfect in the world,” Margaret said.
“If you don’t like to see the leaves turn.”
“Oh Henry, you’re a spoilsport.”
“Just kidding. The views are fantastic,” he admitted.
“I have a feeling California will be good for us,” she said.
I have a feeling California will be bad for us, Henry thought. What he said was, “I’m not sure.”
“Think of it,” Margaret said, “the Pacific, the palisades, the redwoods, and views like this, all in one state.”
“Including the desert.”
“Henry, you’re talking yourself into a depression. This is a vacation. We’re supposed to be having fun.” He strolled back to the car alone. Margaret was right. He t
urned to look at her, standing at the cliff’s edge, her back to him, looking out over the most magnificent ocean in the world. You fool, he thought, it is she and not the view that is your aphrodisiac.
As they went around a curve on the winding road, Henry spotted the green camper up ahead followed closely by a yellow highway patrol car, its roof lights flashing.
“The next lookout should be very soon,” Margaret said, looking up from the map to see the vehicles ahead. “What are they doing?”
“I think he wants the camper to stop,” Henry said, tapping the brakes as he closed in on the slowing vehicles. The camper pulled into the lookout area. The police car followed. Henry stopped fifty feet behind the police car. He saw the trooper emerge, take his gun out of his holster, and approach the driver’s window of the camper.
Henry got out of the car.
“Stay here, Henry,” Margaret said.
“Maybe I can help.”
He stopped when he saw the trooper point the gun directly at the driver’s face as he lowered the window. The driver, a young man with longish hair, handed something out to the policeman. The policeman glanced at the card, keeping the gun inches from the driver’s face. Henry couldn’t hear what the driver said.
With the gun the trooper motioned the driver out of the car. Henry could see that it was a boy of about Stanley’s age. He turned toward the camper, put his hands on the roof, as the trooper felt the sides of his pants and along the inseams. Then, motioning with the gun, he had the young man open the rear of the camper. He peered in, lifted something, dropped it back. The trooper glanced back at Henry, just for a second, as Henry instinctively stepped closer.
The trooper had the young man open the driver’s door wide. Still pointing the gun at the kid, the trooper peered inside. Then he gave the license back to the young man, holstered his gun, and drove off, tires screaming.