A Man to Conjure With

by Jonathan Baumbach

  “I have another patient waiting outside. How much more is there?”

  “Not much. Five minutes.”

  “Five minutes,” the doctor agreed. “I’d like to give you more time but I can’t, Peter. You understand. We’re already a few minutes over.”

  Peter closed his eyes—Gloria, the shadow of her, in his doorway, a cab outside honking its horn. “There are guys owe Ira a favor,” she was saying, “who’d just as soon kill you as look at you. Don’t worry, Peter, I know how to handle Ira—he’s not so bad. Be good, tiger.” And she was gone. “I let her go,” Peter said. “I could have stopped her.”

  “You wanted her to go,” the doctor said.

  It was a revelation. “Do you really think I did? Why? Do you think I’m afraid of Ira?”

  “I think we’d better save it for another hour.” Dr. Cantor walked over to his desk, sighed at the weight of his task, looked through his appointment book—Peter still lying on the couch. “Good,” the doctor said to himself. “Peter, I can see you again at this time a week from today. How’s that workout?”

  Peter sat up with great effort, enormously tired, the room in motion. “I’d like to get out of the city for a while,” he said. “It’s an insane city, New York. You stand on any street corner long enough and some old lady you’ve never seen before is likely to hit you over the head with an umbrella. You know?” He looked at the doctor for verification. Getting none—the doctor involved with his appointment book—he laughed foolishly. “I thought I might visit my brother Herbie who’s in Arizona—my father’s out there too somewhere; Herbie writes that he saw him. Anyway, I’d like to see the West. I know a guy—he was with me at Brooklyn College—who’s a forest ranger somewhere in Colorado. He does nothing, he tells me, but ride a horse all day and think about what he wants to do—when he grows up.” Peter laughed, the doctor’s quiet patience unnerving him. “I think I’d like to do something like that, ride around all day on a horse and think, though I suppose I’d begin to miss people after a while.”

  The doctor stood up, making it clear to Peter, with the special tact of gesture, that it was time for him to leave. “Why don’t you call me, Peter, when you decide whether you want to come in. I’ll hold the same hour open for you, for a few days anyway. As a matter of fact, on considering it, I think the trip west might be a good idea. There’s nothing for you in New York now, except painful associations.” He smiled generously, an indulgence of concern.

  Peter took a last look at where he was. “Wouldn’t taking off like this, now, be running away?” Peter asked, shaken with a kind of tremulous joy, a man without responsibilities, the room slowing down, coming to a stop. “It’s too easy for me to go away now. I don’t have the right to go. People are suffering because of what I’ve done, what I’ve failed to do. What I ought to do is … Do you really think going to Arizona is a good idea?”

  The doctor closed his eyes, a vision of the West behind the New York City owl of his glasses. “Why not?” he said.

  “Why not?” Peter echoed him. “I can always come back and …” It remained unsaid—the sentence never to be finished.

  And they shook hands on it, like two lone cowboys separating at the end of the trail.

  Outside the doctor’s air-conditioned office, New York raged soot-skied in the August heat. Peter spent the rest of the day in Central Park, getting used to the feel of grass against his feet, the smell of country, getting a sense of the West, guilty at his freedom, frightened, lonely, sweating, a Western hero in his Central Park dreams. (Hi-yo, Silver—away!) A dreamer.

  Part ii

  I felt I had met the Lord.

  He calmed me, calling me

  to look into my child’s room.

  He said, I am love,

  and you will win your life

  out of my hands

  by taking up your child.

  —David Ignatow

  | 1 |

  One forgets. Peter had forgotten. Or else when you come back to them after too many years, cities (like people) deceive you, pretend you never knew them, act in fact as if you had never been there at all, as if (the final contempt) you had never been born. The weather in Manhattan on the best of days is heavy. Something to carry around on your back. People commit suicide in San Francisco; in New York you carry the weather on your back.

  Peter Becker wandered the city, looking at store fronts and faces. Some were familiar, as if at some time, in some dream of his life, he had known them. The sun was out though unseen, steaming through the haze, a warm day for February. Not warm, not cold, Peter sweated, wiped his face with a dirty handkerchief. And walked, carrying the weather with him. He walked along Broadway from Seventy-eighth Street to Houston Street, stopping on the way in bars, in Chock Full o’ Nuts. He had breakfast at a Bickford’s—the special was still the special: eggs and bacon, and potatoes and applesauce, English muffin and coffee. For a moment—among the other dispossessed, one of them—he was home. He had a second cup of coffee before he went out into the air. And then for the hell of it he began to trot, gradually increasing his pace—he crossed against the light, out-racing a car determined on its right of way—running like a kid, a young man at forty, a seasoned traveler, a bum. After two blocks of running, his chest hurt, and he walked very slowly after that so as not to joggle anything out of its natural order. In Washington Square Park he shared a bench with a pigeon. Neither minded, Peter less than the pigeon; it was like having company without the burden of making talk. Shooing the pigeon away with a rolled-up Daily News, a small white-haired man sat down next to him, exhaled a sigh of comfort. “Not so cold today,” the man said. “Not so warm either.” Peter nodded. The old man read his newspaper (yesterday’s, Peter noticed), glancing at Peter occasionally as though he wanted to talk, muttering to himself, glowering. “They want trouble, they’ll get trouble,” he said. “Trouble is what they’ll get.”

  Peter took a soiled envelope out of his coat pocket, took out the folded sheets of paper from inside. He unfolded the pages anxiously—almost, one might say, with expectation—yet it was a letter he himself had written and had read, not counting the present reading, at least half a dozen times. He read the letter cautiously, as though it contained something which, if he weren’t on his guard, might scare him half to death.

  My dear son Philly,

  How are you, boy? I’m getting along all right, though miss you, Phil, as you know. (I hope you know.) I feel it’s a great lack that we don’t know each other better—who closer than a father and son?—but maybe that could be changed. Why not? It struck me the other day, Phil, that if I met you on the street I might not even know you. How tall are you now? I don’t even know. What I mean is, it hurts me not to know. I want to know. I have the sense that I’m missing something—your growth—I miss not seeing you grow. It’s hard in a letter to say what I mean. And I’m afraid if I say it, it may not reach you in the way I mean it. A writer I admire says about letters that the ghosts, wherever they dwell, always drink up all the words before the letter arrives. Maybe that’s why I haven’t written you as much as I should. It’s no excuse.

  Phil, I want things to be different between us, different and better. This is my idea: I’m moving back to New York, which is, as much as any place, my home—and by that token, your home too, and you’ve never even been to New York City, have you? What I’m having so much trouble saying is, I’d like you to come and live with me in the city. I’ve meant to write this letter at least a dozen times before, but something always seemed to go wrong at the time—and I was moving around so much. It’s no excuse. I plead innocence, and acknowledge my guilt. It was not a failure of intention, Phil—believe me—but of opportunity. Will you forgive me? I’d like very much for you to come and stay with me in New York, but if not—after all, your grandparents have brought you up, you may have ties in Ohio that are important to you—I would understand, and not love you any less for your decision. I promise you that, word of honor. But Philly, listen, come
to New York for a visit (no strings attached), and let’s see how things go. My idea is to rent a place with a room set aside for you, so that whenever you want to visit (if you want to), you’ll have your own room. But come only if you want to. No obligations, Phil. The hell with obligations.

  There are things I want to tell you about which are hard to explain in a letter. One does what one has to do. I can’t explain. If I had these years to do over again they would be different, I tell myself, but in all likelihood I would do most of the same things again. And regret them again. In my spare time, Phil, I’ve been working on a kind of travel book about the United States, a journal of what’s happened to me, where I’ve been, what I’ve seen. If it’s ever published, it’s to be dedicated to you. What I mean is, Philly, it’s written for you. God knows, I haven’t given you much up to now. Things will be different, I keep saying. Don’t count on it, but they will.

  Are you okay? In good health and all that? What are you studying? What are you interested in? I’d like to get you some books, but I don’t know what you like. Tell me. When I was your age, Ring Lardner (I think) was my favorite author. Have you ever read “Alibi Ike”?

  So tell me more about your interests. But write not out of obligation, only if you feel like it. No obligations between us; I was a son once myself. (Still am, if you ask my father—your other grandfather.) Which reminds me—extend my regards to Mr. and Mrs. Van Wilhite, who are fine people. Give them my best.

  And Philly, come to New York for a visit (a month, a year, as long as you like—just let me know a little in advance). Whatever its drawbacks, New York’s a great city. That’s why I’ve been away for fifteen years. One has to earn the right to return. Or return to earn the right. Maybe, after all—you take yourself wherever you go—all places are the same. Still, I think of New York as my home. And your home. To be alone anywhere, even in the place you were born and grew up, is not to be home.

  My best wishes to all.

  Your loving father,

  And that was it: he had spent hours composing it, trying to strike the right tone, fatherly yet friendly, then writing it finally in his own voice as if he were talking directly to the boy. He couldn’t send it. It was full of evasions, half-truths, sentimental posturing. The boy (who was he, anyway?) would probably laugh at it, or be ashamed that his father (some father!) was such a jerk.

  “Bad news?” the old man next to him asked, clucking with malicious sympathy. “I been there myself. Believe me.” The sky his witness.

  Peter growled, his annoyance wordless. The man staggered up, making sounds to himself, and wandered, bowed, bow-legged, to another (more congenial) bench. Immediately, Peter was sorry—remorse the plague of his spirit. What right had he to be unpleasant to the old man who, like a child, only wanted attention, a little love—like anyone else, damn him!

  Peter looked at the folded sheets of paper in his hand—he knew the letter almost by heart (what other way to know it?)—and decided—a penance for the old man—to take the risk of sending it. As a precaution against changing his mind, Peter rushed off to mail the letter—nodding at the old man as he passed him—with the secret exhilaration of a suicide plunging off a roof. Predictably, as soon as the letter had been lost to the mail box, caught in the underground process of its machinery, he had regrets. Among other causes for concern, he didn’t have a job (or promise of one), he didn’t have a place (still living in a flea bag of a hotel), and his money, what remained of it, would last him, with extreme care, he judged, at most another month. So much for his promises to the boy! And the book, the travel book he had bragged about in his letter (the one already dedicated to his son), existed only as a collection of notes—the passion of the moment of observation eroded by time and distance. To date he had written only one permanent sentence, had rewritten it several times, had polished it to a fine glow, and as a consequence was concerned that if he went on writing, it would inevitably be a falling off. Still, he told himself, he intended when he got the chance (evasion of evasions) to finish the book, to begin the actual writing—the book already written, already dedicated, somewhere inside of him, the trick being to find out where.

  So what would he do with him if the boy actually decided to pay him a visit? It was a problem. Yet when he thought about it in cold February logic (the wind lashing his teeth) he couldn’t believe that this boy, his son, would want to come and live with him—why should he?—his father a stranger, a man of no account. Seated among the old men in the park, Peter suffered his son’s rejection as if his conjecture, the vision of his logic, were an irretrievable fact. And then—a man who needed a son—he hoped (having no hope) that Philly would accept the invitation to visit. The old anxiety like a frozen hand fixed itself in his chest. When you wanted something—one of the continuous lessons of his life—you run the risk of loss. Anyway, what could a bum lose he didn’t already not own? He could afford a few more risks—why not? As it was, the world risked your life every day without even asking you. And he was only forty, a slow starter. Plenty of time. Since Rachel’s death—it was curious how little he remembered of her—he had taken a minimum of chances, and for all his caution was still a loser, only lost less. He still had his health, though a chronic cough haunted his chest, occasional headaches worried him, he had trouble sleeping (his dreams taunting the failure of his life), he felt faint sometimes (shaken by blackness); otherwise he was fine.

  Still, he would take better chances this time, he told himself as he wandered the streets of the Village, warming himself with recollections, a tourist of his own life, replanning the past. How many deaths can you die? he asked himself. “A million” was the answer, but who was counting? Coughing, the weather getting to him, he walked over to the Fifth Avenue Bar for a drink. It was gone; an office building had replaced it. He made accommodation—it was a new possibility of himself—and settled for a small bar on Bleecker Street, which may or may not have been in business fifteen years ago. He didn’t ask. (He didn’t dare.)

  After three drinks he called Lois at work—a nervy gesture, impelled by a sudden, unlikely and remarkable confidence. Hadn’t she told him that she didn’t want to see him again? Ah, but Peter, a man of mission, believed only what he knew.

  “Let’s have lunch,” he suggested, the suggestion making itself.

  Lois seemed distracted. “Who is this, please?” “This is Peter. Let’s have lunch.”

  “Hello. I’ve been thinking about you all morning. For some reason I didn’t recognize your voice.” She laughed nervously. “How are you, Peter?”

  “Let’s have lunch.” His confidence was wearing thin.

  “Today?”

  “Why not?”

  “I can’t today. I already have an appointment. What about tomorrow?”

  Tomorrow? Tomorrow? He considered the question in all its metaphysical implications. He wondered, as if it mattered, what day it came out on—the issue resolving itself on what today was, Wednesday or Thursday—he hadn’t bothered to notice. His appointment book, if he had one, without days or dates. Tomorrow, when you had most of today to do, seemed a long way off.

  “Peter?”

  “Yeah? All right, tomorrow.” Though he tried, he was unable to disguise the pain of his disappointment.

  “You were so silent, I thought we had been cut off.” She lowered her voice. “I worry about you,” she said.

  “I’m all right,” he tried to say, the bones of his grief choking him. What good was confidence if it didn’t preclude pain?

  “I’m sorry I’ve been so difficult,” she said.

  “You haven’t.”

  “I can’t hear you, Peter.”

  “You have a right not to want to see me,” he said.

  “Peter, I didn’t mean that. It was just seeing you … You understand.” Another nervous laugh. “Are you all right?”

  “Who me? Never been better.” Through the glass of the booth he watched the thin Italian at the bar mix a whiskey sour, shaking it between his ha
nds as though it had a life of its own. “Lois, I’ve decided I’m going to stay in New York,” he said, his excitement born and dying in the same sour breath.

  “Don’t you think I knew that?” she said.

  “You know everything,” he said.

  She was immune to irony. “Peter”—she broached the subject with conspicuous tact—“do you have any plans? What I mean is, I may know of a job for you if you’re interested. You’ve had some editorial experience, haven’t you?”

  He cleared his throat. “There was this magazine in San Francisco that ran four issues that I worked on, called Vision. I was art editor. It folded when I quit.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m sure you can do it.”

  “I can do anything,” he said, “only …” The idea of working a full-time job, a restraint on his freedom to do nothing, depressed him. “I’m writing a book,” he announced. It sounded a bit foolish—why had he even brought it up?—a matter of identifying himself, a need.

  “You’ll still need a job,” she said, “unless you’re independently wealthy.” She laughed politely, a little embarrassed at the joke. “What kind of book are you writing?”

  He couldn’t explain over the phone. “A book.”

  “I told you I was painting again, didn’t I?” she said. “Off and on. I mostly do it as a means of relaxation. Oscar says it’s good for me.”

  “Is it good for Oscar?” he said, getting back at her. Then, the new Becker censoring the old: “I’m glad it makes you happy.” Though he meant it straight, it came out ironic.

  “Peter,” she scolded. “There’s an opening here for a copy editor, at the magazine end of this place. It’s not a great job, but until you get your bearings in the city … I’ve already put in a word with the editor for you—Bob Grimes; he’s a nice guy, I think you’ll like him.”