by John Barth
So I let a real stiffness build, till Ms. Pond got the signal that Polly had got ten minutes earlier but refused to acknowledge, and invited her to lunch, declaring—what was indeed the case, but no excuse—that I’d taken to working through the noon hour in order to clear my desk by vacation time.
Far be it from me then, Polly said, clearly set down. I suppose it is getting on to meteor time, isn’t it? We all used to work our fannies off, she assured Ms. Pond, so he could set sail by the eleventh.
Then to me, with as forced a breeziness as ever blew through Court Lane: Got your crew lined up?
You understand, Dad. Not in a hundred years could Polly have forgot (what Jane could have in a week) that the Perseid shower was at hand, which many and many an August past, since her widowhood, she had watched with me the night through from Osborn Jones; that if we had Worked Our Fannies Off to clear the decks for that celestial anniversary, it was in order to Play Them Off together on those same decks, under the fixed and shooting stars.
Guess I’ll be single-handing it this time, Polly. Back to the old window now. Good to see you.
I felt her stare at me more consequentially by far than I’d likely stare from my staring window at my oyster-shell pile. She even complained to Ms. Pond—good honest Polly!—He makes a girl feel right at home, don’t he?
Sorry, Poll.
Oh, wow! Good-bye, Mister Andrews, and bon voyage!
Good-bye, Polly.
In forty years of staring from my office window, Dad, at that mountain of oyster shells over by the packing house, I’d never felt so forcefully as now what a quantity of death they represented. Ten thousand bushels of skeletons; two million separate dyings! I tried multiplying by three and imagining each oyster a European Jew, to comprehend the Holocaust; then I divided by 6,000,000 to put in perspective my own quietus. Only the arithmetic worked.
To business, then! If both Jane and Drew were, let’s say, too spooked by my Sudden Aging to relate to me unofficially any further, the contest over Harrison’s Follies would be strictly between me and their lawyers—a litigation that would not even wind up its overture by the equinox. A new tack was called for; but my staring window was too beclouded by thoughts of Polly for clear course plotting, even before the phone call came from Canada.
Ms. Pond had returned alone from lunch, her manner a prolonged reproof of my rudeness to her predecessor. I know I’m not supposed to interrupt, she declared icily through the intercom not long after; but there’s a lady on Line One in Fort Erie Ontario Canada who claims to be Family and says it’s urgent. To me she sounds smashed out of her mind, but that’s not my business.
I pushed One and identified myself to the (male) operator placing the call: no doubt our Author, doing a bit of subplotting of His own. For my caller—drunk indeed, alas, or doped, and desperate—was Jeannine! Up at that crank sanatorium that the foundation (I here enter on my agenda of unfinished business) ought to cease philanthropizing. Was she all right? I asked as soon as I heard the lush slur in her voice.
All wrong, said she. High as a kite and low as whaleshit, Toddy-O. Crashing! Got to talk to you.
We talked. The guru of her establishment, I learned, was dead—accidentally drowned a month since while fishing on Lake Erie—and Jeannine feared the institution was disintegrating even faster than herself. She confirmed what I had gathered from other sources: that poor Joe Morgan, late of Marshyhope, was there. Further, that he was no longer a patient but some sort of clinical counselor, to whose unlicensed ministrations she had turned in lieu of her deceased doctor’s. Further yet, that she had never needed help so sorely as now, when her Last Hope to Make It, Reggie Prinz, had dumped her. Did I understand? She was out of the movie! Prinz was shacked up in New York City with her own ex-stepdaughter, Mel Bernstein’s kid, and wasn’t that incest or something? But the main thing was, even Joe Morgan (We call him Saint Joe up here, Toddy, he’s such a fucking saint; I mean literally a fucking saint, ha ha; we’ve got a little thing going ourselves, or did have; part of my prescription) was pissed at her now, ’cause his wife didn’t used to drink, if I knew what she meant, and it looked like she’d worn out her welcome up there even though it was her dad’s money that paid the effing rent. But the main thing was, to hell with telephones: she needed a place to crash and a trusty shoulder to cry on and maybe a little fatherly advice, and she’d always thought of me as being as much her father as her father was, ha ha, and if she could make it to a plane could she come down like right away for a couple of days? At least we could talk about her dad’s estate, and like that.
She paused. Then asked startlingly, over my pause: Mom isn’t with you, is she?
Your mother’s off with your new stepparent-to-be, I reported, glad of the extra moment to consider. A sire I may be, Dad, but I am no parent. My possible daughter is a fairly hopeless mid-thirtyish drunk, once uncommonly attractive to the eye but never long on character, judgment, intelligence, or talent: a woman whose girlhood I recall with some affection but in whom my interest steadily declined from her puberty on. Her brother, her parents, most of her husbands, her current (unlicensed) therapist, even her fickle lover and her ex-stepdaughter (whom you recall I bailed out along with Drew Mack’s “pink-necks” on Commencement Day)—all in my opinion have more at their center than does poor rich Jeannine. What’s more, damn it, Osborn Jones and I are about to drop our moorings, and I’ve plenty to do between now and then!
On the other hand, she is Jeannine: companion at three years old of my original tour of the Original Floating Theatre on June 21 or 22, 1937. Quite possibly bone of my bone et cetera, and if so the last of our not very impressive line. Moreover, since our Author saw fit to place this call just as I was in mid-rumination about the Mack estate, there was plainly a Buzzard circling here.
I volunteered to fly to her: have a look at that farm, a word with Morgan, a chat with her—and bid her bye-bye when I was ready. But no, no, she had to get out of there; no privacy anyhow from the feebs and loonies. She needed (weeping now) to see me alone. She was feeling… well… suicidal.
I regarded the shell pile. Hell, I said, so am I, honey. Come on down; we’ll discuss ways and means.
Good-bye concentration. She is to call back when she’s made her reservations, so that I can haul over to Baltimore and meet her flight.
She hasn’t called. Ms. Pond reports unsympathetically, after phoning back, that officials of the Fort Erie Remobilization Farm report that Ms. Golden has left the premises without authorization or proper notification of her intentions. They will appreciate a call from her, at least, if she shows up here. Now, Ms. Pond knows that “Bea Golden” (up there she’s known as “Bibi”) is Jeannine Mack; she seems not to know further that we may be father and daughter, for it was her aspersive insinuation, as she left for the weekend, that I had given dear Polly so cold a shoulder because I was Otherwise Engaged! Her exact words: I thought it was a single-handed cruise, not a singles cruise.
Really! Five-thirty now, and no word from Jeannine, who may well be passed out in the Buffalo, or for that matter the Baltimore, airport. No response to my periodic pages at both terminals, and the airlines won’t divulge their passenger lists. There are two more nonstops this evening, also several connecting flights through Pittsburgh. I’ve a dozen things to do at the cottage before I can set sail! Not to mention before I can receive a weekend houseguest. Stupid of me not to have specified clearer arrangements…
Damn it, Author, this improvisation is wearing thin! Must I cue you, like an actor his tardy sound-effects man, who are supposed to cue me?
Just then, as if on cue, the telephone rang.
Ahem, sir: JUST THEN, AS IF ON CUE
Attaboy. ’Bye, Dad.
T.
N: Todd Andrews to the Author. A series of 21’s and an intention to bequeath.
Skipjack Osborn Jones
Slip #2, Municipal Harbor
Cambridge, Maryland 21613
Friday, August 29, 1969
> Sir:
Numbed by a certain letter, I am moved to this letter by a certain number.
21 Fridays ago, in early March, I declined “for the present, at least,” your request to “use” me in a projected new fiction. More specifically, I believe I promised to consider your strange proposal over Easter and let you know if further reflection should change my mind. You’ve heard no more from me since, because until today I gave the matter no more thought. It has been an eventful season.
21 days ago, on August 8, I was to have boarded Osborn Jones at Todds Point for a final cruise of my favorite Chesapeake anchorages—which number, as it happens, just about three weeks’ worth. O.J. & I got off a day late, and our itinerary suffered two major diversions, with the result that certain snug and splendid coves I shall not get to say goodbye to. Even so, we traversed a considerable stretch of tidewater, and just this morning—Day 21 in O.J.‘s log—we rearrived at Slip #2 to check in at the office and collect the mail. Tomorrow we shall move down to our starting place and complete the circuit.
21 hours ago, more or less, at our final overnight anchorage (Sawmill Cove, off Trappe Creek, off Choptank River, one of my favorites of my favorites), I began drafting the ultimate and newsiest installment of my ancient Letter to My Father, to bring him up to date on the 21 days since I’d written him last. But after an hour’s scribbling I put it by: there seemed at once too much to tell and too much of consequence not yet tellable—at least till I should get home, check in at the office, and review my mail.
For symmetry’s sake I should like to say that 21 minutes ago, in that office, I opened among that accumulated mail a letter-bomb, and was mortally injured thereby. But in fact that noiseless, flashless, unshrapneled blast went off three hours back, in mid-muggy afternoon—since when I’ve closed up shop till after Labor Day, walked back down High Street to the boat basin, and sat under O.J.‘s awning, fairly stunned by the concussion of that letter (a simple wedding announcement from my longtime secretary Polly Lake, with a note on the back in her familiar hand).
The wound is fatal, but not instantly: another 21 days or so ought to do the trick; I had been dying already. Meanwhile my head has cleared enough for me to get on with the business of putting my affairs in order. Hence this letter, to report to you that—as on your Floating Opera in 1937—I have changed my mind. A codicil to my will will bequeath to you my literary remains: i.e. (as I mean to destroy all other personal papers), my Letter to My Father, of which you may make whatever use you wish, and certain letters from other characters in the little drama of my life’s recycling.
To that former Letter, in the three weeks (or so) left to me, I’ll add my account of the Last Cruise of the Skipjack Osborn Jones, amplifying for Dad (and you) what in my log, and in this letter, are mere terse entries: E.g.:
Day 1 (Sat 8/9): Choptank R. (Broad Creek/Harris Creek/Dun Cove). 1700 hrs: Anchor in 8’, Dun Cove. Omelettes w. Caprice des Dieux & Moselle: gd. 2200: Commit 1st incest, Missionary position: so-so. Winds calm, air 79 & humid. Could last night’s call have been from Polly? From Jane?
Day 3 (M 8/11): Magothy R. (Gibson I./Red House Cove). 1200: Jeannine to Airpt & back to Buffalo/Ft. Erie, under silent protest, after final incest & no bfst. A tergo, shameful & memorable. Wind WSW 10. My my my. Chester R. (Queenstown Creek): 2400: Perseid meteors, mostly obscured by clouds. Worry abt J. Illumination re Mack v. Mack: Where is Harrison’s shit? Could Author possibly go so far as to rerun that? Mosquitoes.
Day 5 (W 8/13): Chester R. (Langford Creek, off Cacaway I.). 1600: Wind WSW 15 & rising. Reef main. Cacaway = Caca + away?
Day 14 (F 8/22): Miles R. (St. Michael’s Harbor). 1000: Call office: investigator’s report. Lord Baltimore is “Baron” André Castine of Canada, ½ brother of A. B. Cook, and possibly CIA. Continue cruise or get home fast? Will flip (coin).
Day 16 (Sun 8/24): Patuxent R. (off Solomon’s I.): 0900: Up anchor & motor O.J. upriver with Jane M. & behind André C. in Baratarian, to meet movie folk at Benedict. D.C. to burn tonight on Bloodsworth I. Thundershowers likely (70% P.O.P.). What are they up to? What am I?
Day 19 (W 8/27): Tred Avon R. (Martin Cove): 1830: Anchor in 6’, alone. Air still & muggy. BBQ filet mignon, salad, Fr bread, gd modest Bordeaux (Château La Tour de By ’62). Are Castine & Cook conning Drew? How is my daughter? Are they rehearsing for the real B.C.? Do I care? Are Castine & Drew conning Jane? Is Drew conning me? Is our Author conning us all? Where does Bray fit in? 2100: Full moon. Herons. Bored & horny. I miss Polly.
Day 21 (F 8/29): Choptank R. (Sawmill Cove/C’bge): 1030: O.J. in slip: end of cruise. End of cruising. To hotel for mail & clean suit. To office for mail & report. Hope Jeannine’s OK and wonder what on Earth induced me to etc.
Etc. Jeannine wasn’t; isn’t. Not impossibly because her possible father first diddled and then ditched her, my possible and troubled daughter has evidently left her Fort Erie sanatorium and gone to live in Lily Dale, N.Y., with our fuzzy friend Mr. Jerome Bonaparte Bray, last seen in the Prohibited Area of Bloodsworth Island and there looked for (vainly) by U.S. Navy helicopters when Drew Mack and I sailed in aboard the O.J. on Day 17 (M 8/25). The question of Harrison Mack Jr.‘s freeze-dried excrement—whether, in their crash program to launch Cap’n Chick’s Crabsicles in 1970, Mack Enterprises might inadvertently have disposed of that item of the Mack estate and thereby once more fertilized the future with the past—no longer seems important to the case, compared with those more fertile questions of Day 19. And that call on the midnight of Day 0 (F 8/8), which Jeannine answered in the living room of my Todds Point cottage before I was awake enough to get the phone, was from Polly Lake, now Mrs. Someone Else, desperately intending after all to propose joining me in O.J. ‘s cruise and holy matrimony despite my rude failure, earlier that day, to propose the same to her. And hearing I was Not Alone, Polly felt an utter, final fool, hung up the phone, married her Florida Chap at last, and sent me on the 21st the announcement thereof, which ticked away in the Dorset Hotel till today, Day 21, when I snatched up my mail, hurried over to the office, learned many a remarkable, mysterious, and distressing thing, wondered where in the world to begin, wished dear Polly were there to advise me, recognized her handwriting on that one piece of mail, and opened that Announcement.
On the back whereof, in Polly’s firm clear precious hand, she announced further all the above: her last-crazy-long-shot visit to Cambridge and my office on Day 0 (when I rebuffed her); her crazier desperate last phone call that night; her conclusion that she was a vaster fool than even she’d supposed; and her (lethal, but) nonetheless loving last Good-bye to
Yours posthumously, 21 days (or so) hence,
Todd Andrews
O: Jacob Horner to Jacob Horner. His rescue of Marsha Blank from Comalot Farm, and present anxiety in her behalf.
8/7/69
TO:
Jacob Horner, Remobilization Farm, Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada
FROM:
Jacob Horner, Remobilization Farm, Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada
Only today the Anti-Ballistic Missile bill was approved by two votes in the U.S. Senate, General Hull retreated from Canada back to Detroit, the Germans captured Liège, the Marines landed on Guadalcanal, Napoleon set out for his second exile aboard Admiral Cockburn’s Northumberland, Neptune remained stationary in Right Ascension, the United States of America established a War Department, the Viet Cong raided the “most secure” of U.S. military bases, at Cam Ranh Bay, and your Woman Marsha Blank/“Peggy Rankin”/“Pocahontas” received a packet of Honey Dust through the afternoon mails, enclosed in a letter from Jerome Bray to “Bibi” Golden/“Rennie Morgan”/Etc.
You are Concerned. “Peggy” is semicomatose again, as when you Picked Her Up at Lily Dale on 7/22, St. Mary Magdalene’s Day. “Rennie” (again) is dead drunk. Dr. Morgan impatient. You Do Not Believe that he will abide much longer Ms. Golden’s ever less convincing portrayal of the late Mrs. Morgan, who seldom used alcohol. It is only for the sake of Bibi’s own
therapy, since her recent abandonment by Reg Prinz in favor of Merry Bernstein, that Saint Joe indulges her sloppy rendition of Rennie, to the point of sleeping with her. But he dislikes drunks, especially when they misplay starring roles in Der Wiedertraum, already out of gear. What will you Do, you Wonder, when he throws her out and redemands that you Produce His Wife, alive and well as before you Came Between Them?
For that matter, what will you Do if Marsha (whom you Can No Longer Easily Call “Peggy Rankin” or “Pocahontas”) really does revisit Bray next week, as she declares she must? You are Jealous (and Vaguely Frightened) of him. You are Truly Frightened for her. But you are as Terrified by the prospect of another solo expedition to Lily Dale as by the prospect of what will happen when you Fail To Restore Rennie Morgan to her husband by 9/1, per schedule.
Yet who is there to go with you, if Marsha does not return and you must Re-retrieve Her? Tombo X grows weekly more belligerent; wants all honkies off his premises. Casteene appears to have disappeared with Merry Bernstein’s group. Anarchy threatens. Reparalysis beckons.
Remarkably, you Care About All This.
Last time you were Lucky. Tell us about it, Horner, they demanded, Casteene and Saint Joe, in the P & A Room on Thursday 7/24, Fast of Av, ☌♆☽‧☌♂☽ , when you Regained The Farm at last, Fetched Marsha straight to the infirmary, and were by them Shaken Awake, not from Paralysis, but from Exhausted Sleep. What’s Bray up to over there?
He wasn’t home, you Replied. Fortunately. It was your Impression that he had gone again to Maryland with the film company, leaving Marsha, in the condition to be described, to tend his automatic computer and feed his livestock.
What sort of livestock? Is the farm legit, or a front? Indian nationalism? Dope? Is it the same premises that the Remobilization Farm occupied from 1956 to 1965, before it moved here? What’s he up to with that computer? C.I.A. connection? What took you so long?