Eli could only blink in disbelief. Had Orrin really said that? So callous and petty, aggressively uncouth? It was too much for Paperman, who was already an hour behind schedule. He left without speech or ceremony at 6:48 (thus concluding the only twenty-two minutes on the Eli Log since Tuesday last) and in the ensuing void Orrin was certain he had behaved badly, and counter to any purpose he might consciously have conceived.
But patching it up would not prove easy. No answer all that evening at Marcy’s, and after yet another night of shivering and tossing, he was stonewalled next morning by Eli’s receptionist, no longer his confidante. Heavy laden, he appeared at the Cambridge YMCA during Eli’s basketball hour, but Eli was cold to him there. Orrin readily conceded they had bickered without cause and the fault was all his; Eli nodded, emitted the blankest of thanks, and walked onto the court.
That afternoon, even Clyde snubbed him. Or not snubbed but failed him, cancelling a dinner date because both boys had the China Flu or the Swine Flu—some highly subjective germ. Orrin dragged himself to The Club instead and tried to raise the old tones, but it was tough sledding. One was paying for a mantle of self-esteem and a sense of belonging there, but too often Orrin felt like a straggler at The Club these days, an outsider.
Faced with the endless weekend (not to mention a virtual institutionalization of the wetting trend) Orrin was prepared to make it official: he was depressed. In commemoration, he fetched down the jellyglass and reprised the old anatomical criteria for decanting—Fudd’s Eyeball generally, though there was one bottom-of-the bottle configuration that by chance could only be Fudd’s Privie Parts and hence gave rise to a nightcapping toast to “the dark side of Disney”, albeit Orrin knew that Walt Disney technically bore no responsibility for Elmer Fudd, who was after all a Walter Lanz creation. But Bacchic license, this.
His sleeps were shallow and dreamless, unsatisfying, and he ate poorly, dining off canned soups and salty nibbles, in a behavior gleaned from clients over the years. Not that it was all negative. Certain mornings the dehydration of hangover left him oddly trim of intellect, throbless and unmuddied of mind, as though the froth had boiled away and only the essence remained: in short, he did some thinking. But on one such morning, with just such searing lucidity, Orrin suffered a painful epiphany.
He was tying his shoes that day when he stopped, strands-a-dangle, to record the trivial overwhelming insight he had. Which was this: no matter the variables (day or night, boaters or brogans) Orrin always did up his left lace first. He had in stock no old home movies to prove this, yet he knew it was so (and it was so) and the force was not in his having such a habit, the force was in his absolute lifelong obliviousness to it. How could he dodge the conclusion that he was equally unknown to himself in many other ways as well? What if Bemis were to shadow him now, hovering by, making purely objective notes on Orrin’s appearance and behavings. Would Orrin even recognize himself in the resulting portrait?
He could recall inviting Paperman into his life as a perfect stranger—no, because he was a perfect stranger—and now in the clear dry light of his blood he saw a larger truth; that they all were perfect strangers. Not only Eli, a truly random sampling right off the rack, but Orrin’s own family, son and a daughter, wife of three decades, in the end mystifying. And himself as well. “It’s only the truth,” he exclaimed aloud, after Elspeth, who at the age of nine would use this expression to firm up her most heartfelt allegations. “It’s only the truth!”
“Don’t you even know the first thing about yourself?” Theo asked not long ago, and Orrin had cavalierly dismissed the remark. Not now.
He cancelled two days’ worth of appointments (giving as his excuse to Sarah the Swine Flu) and saw too much of McAllister and McAllister’s pale son. Pale and shaky himself, he did what he could at this time. Took the improving May air along the beach at Hull, feeling lonely, very lonely, yet genuinely touched by the beauty of this world. And he pulled hard for Oil Can Boyd out in Cleveland and Detroit.
Had Eli come back at any point during these eight days in May, the outcome would have been about the same. Unconsciously the depression was tailored to last precisely until he tripped the Papermeter and unwittingly sublet all of Orrin’s disappointment. Consciously Orrin was thinking that things would not improve until he had squared matters with the younger man; until the resumption of domestic tranquility at Filbert Street.
He had begun to wonder if the chance would ever come. Never had the Papermeter gathered such dust, never so long between the minimalist perfunctory punch-ins, Fudd and a Bud. From behind the high windowless walls of his despair, each day could feel like a month, each week seem a whole era. Orrin could believe that sweeping changes had taken place: Eli and Marcy married, already the parents of auburn-haired children, inking a purchase-and-sales on a ticky-tacky in Belmont …
Unbeknownst to him, Eli and Marcy had troubles of their own. Marcy had decided to lay down a rule or two, like the one limiting Paperman to three nights a week at her apartment; she must begin to rebuild her private life, after all, if he did not seriously wish to share it. Faced with this manifesto from Marcy, and having seen about enough of Orrin’s shenanigans, Eli had been browsing for alternative lodgings and now needed to know the final score with Orrin. Orrin would either make it perfectly possible or perfectly impossible—clearly he was a master of each mode.
So there Eli was, suddenly one night, and Orrin did not so much as glance up from the TV, or speak, though even as he sat there he realized this was an odd, arbitrary and counter-productive fragment of behavior. Certainly it had nothing to do with Jack’s update on the baggage handlers’ strike out at Logan, and yet still he did not turn, or nod, or wave, or speak. And as the seconds gathered, he began to experience a verbal gravidity, an inability to raise sound from his mouth, though by now he was trying in earnest.
“Orrin?” said Paperman cautiously. “Are you—in there?”
“Eli! I thought I heard you come in.”
This was lame, but at least it got him off the schneid. He was vaguely aware of wishing to project an aura of coziness, of a household so rife with warm, simple pleasures that intrusions from without were at best marginally perceptible. In truth, he had just walked in himself: flicked on the Jack-and-Liz and sunk straight to the bottom of the man-eating “Depression Chair”, an unnaturally square severe armchair which stifled all save the most vigorous movement.
Extricating himself from it now, Orrin selected a subtle offense; to play the host. “I should offer you something,” he said, precluding the possibility that Eli might simply make himself at home. But Paperman refused to take the offense to heart. True, Orrin was complaining again, but Eli was prepared to acknowledge he had not been a good friend of late. Between the stickiness with Marcy and the time press on all sides, he had definitely let things lapse at Filbert Street.
“The place is looking good,” he said. “New plants. The bay looks downright lush.”
“No name-calling now,” said Orrin. He was smiling, but teeth first. “It does add something, doesn’t it? McAllister down the hill carries a few houseplants and it seemed worth the small investment.”
He had purchased the plants on consecutive occasions during the official depression, times when he required a second bottle in a single calendar day. To ward off implications, Orrin had sprung for the coleus, the spider, and the Swedish ivy.
“Definitely,” said Paperman. “We should have done it sooner.”
Eli’s use of the word ‘we’ tasted unfortunately bitter to Orrin but he worked his way past it. He refueled, counted ten, and plunged in on his long pent-up apology:
“Eli, I hope you know how very ashamed I am for my behavior the last time. Inexcusable, though accounted for in part by the devil in the bottle. I was on the occasion not uninebriated. Was influenced, in short.”
“Not uninebriated? I believe I may have just heard the world’s first triple negative.” Maybe it was only two negatives, but he had no real response to
these inevitable retrenchments of Orrin’s.
“I’m very serious, Eli. I want you to know I am deeply sorry for what I said. For whatever I said, you know.”
“Are you, Orrin?”
This was a slip. But having made it, having lapsed from repartee, Eli saw that it was just as well. Walking on eggshells had begun to pall quickly this time, and it was silly to prop up a relationship on lies and evasions.
“Am I sorry? I am telling you that I am sorry. That is what I am telling you precisely.”
“But is it such a wonderful thing, this being sorry? Should we celebrate it by closing the banks and the schools?”
“You are rude, Eli. Really you are.”
“I don’t mean to be rude. I just want to say that being drunk isn’t an excuse for anything, and being sorry isn’t an excuse for being drunk, and furthermore that I’m not sure you really are sorry. Though you may really be drunk.”
“That is not a cutting remark, Eli. What makes you think it is such a smirking laughable matter, your rudeness?”
“Orrin, come on. When I first knew you, you would have laughed too—at my calling out your bullshit. Relax, man.”
“You arrogant shit!” said Orrin, turning sharply away. Paperman simply gaped. Orrin tried to collect himself by stealing a peek at the television, a few scattered clouds out over the Cape and the islands …
“Orrin, really—don’t you think you might need some help on this,” Eli was saying softly, ingratiatingly, as though addressing a child. Not meaning his help, though, not offering companionship, but meaning to suggest Orrin was bricko, crackers. Some help.
“How much? A pint of help or a whole goody gallon of it? What’s prescribed exactly?”
“Oh Orrin.”
“Damn you. You damnable shit, Paperman. I know what you think. I am a boozing old over-the-hill fool of a human, so useless and you so very able. You think I was never worth a goody goddamn but I will tell you this—”
“No need.”
“—An old boozing neutered goat, but I will tell you that I am not, was not that, no sir! She loved me plenty, and we did what people do. We did it plenty. Did it up against the wall, did it hanging over the edge of the bed, cantilevered goddamn your eyes! We did it from here to Timbuktu and you—”
“I don’t need to hear this, Orrin.”
“You don’t need to, you don’t need to. But maybe I need to say this, Paperpig, because we would be doing it still, do you understand, it isn’t physically impossible to keep it, it’s just the bloody baggage of life that stops you. Jesus! Do you see that, can you see that, Paperpiggle? Because you would if you ever loved anyone in your miserable half-baked life!”
Orrin spun to laser Eli’s eyes, to fucking-A nail him, and saw there a detachment so bland, a withdrawal so complete that it made his own face bestial—gums flaring, blood pounding—and he spun back only to find the Weatherbaby every bit as goddamn blithe, cloud fucking ninety-nine as usual, and went after him with the high hard one, fastballing the Fudd right between his eyes.
“Jee Zuz!” emitted Paperman, as the TV flashed and fizzled in a hail of electronic fire and webbed glass.
The thing was still sizzling and tinkling to rest and here came Paperman, shaking his head gently, frowning his damnable liberal frown, moving forward to take Orrin in hand like a bloody child. Orrin braced himself physically. He heaved a big right hand, fanned on it, then came back with a flurry of left hooks, because the right shoulder was really hanging after hitting 95 on the radar gun with no proper warmup.
The lefts did nothing inside Eli’s clinch, so he pushed free and shot out a toe-kick that caught solid shin. Now Orrin circled, his hands milling karate-style, in an unconscious parody of Peter Sellers doing the bumbling French inspector, but neither man was close to laughter.
“Stop yourself, Orrin. Just stop yourself Look at this place.”
“Why should I? Why can’t I do as I like with my own television set? And why can’t I defend myself in my own bloody home?”
“Oh Jesus.”
“Stop my self. You told me my self was my greatest creation, remember? I built a self, you said, and now you want me to stop it. Then what? Then what?”
“Just do me a favor, Orrin. Don’t apologize for this. Now or ever. Give me five minutes to pack up and do not apologize, that’s all.”
Things had gotten out of hand. Eli was shaking, visibly upset, and Orrin’s only need now was to see to him, to say soothing words of apology and comfort. But he was forced to stand fast and do nothing. He was forced to sit, as the raging blood subsided, and he did sit, inside the ululating silence. He sat for hours without moving, like a tree on a windless day, and the more he sat the more he did sit.
When he stood again, hours after Eli had gone, he went instinctively to search for Jack-and-Liz inside the shattered machinery. All the king’s horses, he couldn’t help thinking, as he scanned the rubble for their broken faces. And he saw no reason to deny himself the long thin nasal laughter that came keening from the depths of his disturbance.
IV
The Old Reality
“I understand nothing,” Ivan went on, as though in delirium. “I don’t want to understand anything now. I want to stick to the fact. I made up my mind long ago not to understand. If I try to understand anything, I shall be false to the fact and I have determined to stick to the fact.”
—DOSTOEVSKY
21
Clyde had taken over. Alarmed by the call from Eli Paperman, he came prepared to buck his father’s will if necessary. As it happened, nothing extreme was needed, because Orrin appeared at his own front door around midnight in a state so sodden and disoriented that he believed he was dreaming the mere sight of Clyde. Gliding along with the dreamwork, he went easily, almost light-heartedly, the short few blocks to Massachusetts General Hospital.
There, in the frankly elitist Waldo Emerson Ward, Orrin’s ailment could be loosely diagnosed: it might be the ticker, or the great gray brain, or even just a touch of the old rheumatizz. They gave a lot of leeway at the Emerson—much the best setting for any painless debility, a glorified spa, really. As far as Clyde was concerned (and this both for public consumption and his father’s) the program would be “a few days’ rest for overwork and fatigue,” plus of course the slight “concussion” they had concocted, knowing Orrin would want something solid and a tad dramatic.
So he woke on Saturday morning to a view of sun-tipped sails on the bright choppy Charles River. He was in a private room with two high windows delineating the water—not too shabby for a midnight arrival. Starlings darted across his view, and the enveloping whiteness of pane and counterpane almost convinced Orrin he was waking amongst the angels, in heaven. The advent of the breakfast tray soon enough brought him back down to earth, and he was picking it over with limited interest when he glanced up to find Clyde and Phyllis framed in the doorway.
“Advance, children. By all means, do advance.”
Phyll was gripping a mixed bouquet, iris and jonquils, and Clyde held a clutch of those detective novels he was always recommending as great relaxation. Orrin could never fathom his son’s craving for relaxation. Between his cushy, almost squushy life (a two-course teaching load and the nearly overlapping sabbaticals), it seemed all Clyde ever did was relax.
“So how are you feeling?”
“Not bad. How am I supposed to be feeling? I tried to debrief Nurse Wretched there about my symptoms—so I could proceed to limp on the correct leg, you know—but she was as closemouthed as a priest in the box.”
“You sound like yourself”
“Thank you, Clydie, you sound like yourself too. But what am I doing here? Why the Mass. General?”
“Just a few days of observation and rest, Dad. You know you hit your head pretty hard last night. In a bar-room dispute, apparently.”
“If it happened in a bar-room dispute, it seems more likely that someone else hit it. I do recall engaging in discussion with some younger fel
lows in a drinkery. Possibly one of them hit it—though I must say they seemed very civil to me.”
“Well, the details are hazy. Possible concussion, at any rate, hence the observation and rest. It’s not such a bad spot to be in, Dad. I could almost envy you.”
“Yes,” said Phyll. “We both thought it was so cozy and cheerful in here. You have the nicest room, Orrin.”
“First class,” added Clyde. “And by the time you get out, the lilacs will be out too.…”
“That’s silly. I can’t stay in here to be observed. I don’t like to be observed. They must know already whether I have a concussion, and frankly I don’t feel the least bit concussed. I can rest perfectly well at home.”
“It’s all covered by the insurance. Why not take advantage of it for a few days?”
“We’ll see.” said Orrin, glancing toward the closet to see if his clothes were visible. He could simply dress and leave, after they had. Ever since the events of last evening came back to him, he felt a powerful urge to rush back home and sweep up the broken glass, to quick replace the busted TV with a new one exactly the same. To restore order, as it were, before the disorder could take root, or appear meaningful.
“This one looks possible,” he said now. He had been turning the paperback mysteries over in his hand, pretending to peruse the dustjacket blurbs.
“Tell me about this fight in the bar,” said Clyde. “In the drinkery.”
Clyde knew there had been no fight, of course, and no concussion. But he wanted to be gently on the offensive. He was banking on his father’s insobriety and shame, for Orrin would not be certain what had happened and would accept some direction rather than appear the least bit unknowing.
“It was nothing. A discussion, as I say.”
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