The Question Authority

by Rachel Cline

  How we got to the motel I can’t tell you. Obviously, Naomi drove the van but I don’t remember if it was that night or the next morning or what. I do remember seeing that place for the first time and being excited because of the neon sign and the swimming pool—for a minute, I thought it would all turn back into a vacation. Naomi must have taken over but I can’t ever remember hearing her raise her voice, or speaking with anything but that ironical tone she had. I think it took like three days for your father to get there and bail you out, and get us all to wherever we flew out of. The plane was tiny, and I was scared of your strict, weird dad in his bowtie and his seersucker suit. Yeah, the Grim Reaper. That’s not wrong. We changed planes somewhere, Denver, I guess. No one cried, except Doria, of course.

  We got home in the middle of the afternoon. Everybody’s parents were there and that was really weird. I’d never seen them all together in one place except maybe at my bat mitzvah. Most of the fathers I’d never seen before, at all. And they were all so mad. Well, mine was, that’s what I’m remembering. I felt bad for not having any souvenirs—as if what my father really needed at that moment was a plastic tomahawk. He looked so fucking disappointed in me I guess I wanted to chop him up. Mom hugged me but he just stood there with his arms wrapped around his chest. On the way home he wouldn’t even turn on the radio for the Mets game. I remember waving goodbye to your kids: “See you soon! Love ya!” I thought we’d be reunited in a few days, weeks at most. And I thought you were a political prisoner.

  A political prisoner. Just want you to marinate in that a little. Like fucking Gandhi or something. That’s how the mind of a teenage girl works. Do you get it?

  In September, when we heard about the settlement, that we’d probably never see you again, we had a big sobfest at Christmas’s house, with Mateus rosé and Laura Nyro records, and I think Tiddlywinks even read some of her poetry. After that, we met once a week to reminisce and go over the news, asking ourselves what you would have said about the Yom Kippur War and “I am not a crook”—trying to stay true to the “values” you’d taught us. We felt so abandoned— by you, even though we knew that you had no choice; and by our families, who treated us like lepers; and also by the Academy board, who with all their liberal rhetoric wouldn’t stand up for our right to live and love freely the way we’d been taught to stand up for everyone else’s. We shall overcome, my ass. That’s what Uhura said, back when she was hilarious. Our parents could have sent you away forever if they’d pressed charges instead of agreeing to that settlement. I guess it would have blown up the Academy, but still, they could have.

  So, instead of thinking about how your cycle of self-pity and etc. started then, why not think of 1971 as the year you didn’t go to jail for the rest of your life?

  I know you seduced that hitchhiker. I won’t lecture you, because what’s the point. I also won’t let you back into this apartment. That was the deal, asshole.

  25

  Bob

  From: bear@nyc.rr.com

  To: PBJ@nyc.rr.com

  Date sent: Feb 19, 2009 11:00PM MST

  Subject: re: WTF

  Here’s my version:

  I came back to our honeymoon motel to write it for you, because I love you and want you to remember how much, but also for Archer, because . . . I’ll tell you about that later. I may be the lying bastard you think I am but at least I’ll never do that to you. I don’t mean shoot myself and leave a half-dead man behind, I mean force you to spend the rest of your life wondering how you fucked things up so badly, so completely, that forgiveness is beside the point. That’s the irony. The worse it gets, the harder it is to pretend that there are such things as redemption or forgiveness, and the more I just want to say, “fuck it.”

  When I was twenty-six, looking at my son was like looking at the worst part of myself: the fear in his eyes all the time, the eagerness to please. I loved that kid more than I’ve ever loved anyone, even though I hated him, too. He was so clearly a copy of me.

  Anyway:

  Before I let you all out of the van, I give the talk: we’re guests. We represent New York City, the East Coast, dirty hippie communists, right? Don’t give them any more reasons to hate us than they already have. You say, “Don’t lecture us, get a haircut,” and Archer high-fives you. I pretend to laugh. But I know you’ll all behave in this place, because it’s cool. I say “One hour,” and you scramble, leaving me, Naomi, and Doria, who’s fast asleep at her mother’s side. She’s four. When she was nursing, Naomi used to say she felt like a cow but now she’s more like a tree, rooted to the spot, nourishing, sheltering, all the while getting dryer and more rigid. She shrugs at me. “Go on in,” she says. “They can’t be unsupervised in there. Remember the kid at the counter?” And I didn’t until this second. When we were here two years ago he was around your age, so he’s sixteen or seventeen now.

  I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of that place. Even the name—who says “topsy-turvy” anymore? I love that they’ve been leaving their kid in charge of the whole thing since he was Archer’s age. I love that every time I come here it looks like it just got a fresh coat of paint. A lot of roadside attractions turn up a little sad if you come by a second time but this thing has a funny integrity. Inside the front room that serves as ticket booth, newsstand, and gift shop, the kid’s come out from behind the register—he’s already flirting his ass off with Trina, who’s gazing at the silver bracelets in the dusty display case. “That’s a pretty name, is it Spanish or something?” he asks, like he’s never seen anything like her before. But no, everybody’s got a TV. She’s just Lieutenant Uhura in civilian clothes. I’m going to make that her nickname—it might come off racist but screw it. The rest of you are waiting by the bathroom.

  I peel ten bucks out of my money clip, making sure the kid sees my watchband—Navajo silver and better by far than anything he’ll ever sell. “A buck a head?” I say and he nods. “Two more in the car might join.” Sometimes my speech goes all cowboy out here but I’ve got no legitimate claim to that.

  “Is the little girl yours?” he asks me, trying to be friendly but meaning Archer.

  “My son,” I correct him and can tell he’s flustered and embarrassed because he thinks he’s too hip to make that mistake. “Happens all the time,” I say. “We really need to get his hair cut but he won’t let anybody near him with scissors.”

  I let you get a head start so I can surprise you in some way I’ll figure out later and scan the Arizona Republic, biding my time by the door. This is the second most fun thing about traveling with girls—I can always get a squeal out of at least one of you. On a good day, I’ll get pummeled by tiny, ineffectual girl fists or someone will walk off in a snit and require soothing. You don’t see my tricks as the pathetic strategies of a seventeen-year-old boy trying to get laid. You don’t realize twenty-six is no better than seventeen. The paper fails to mention the war, except for two death notices. Events in New York City are invisible, too. The teenager’s leaving me alone here; he can tell I’m not a thief.

  “Hey,” says Naomi, who has slipped in without my realizing it.

  “Where’s—?”

  “Asleep in the back. I left the windows open.”

  “Are you going in?” I ask her, really just wanting to know if my fun will be spoiled. Not that she ever gets in the way, or even comments, just that she observes—even with her hair in her eyes when she’s pretending not to. It was what I fell in love with about her the day we met.

  “Is it Italian or something?” she asked then. I was about to leave a buck on the counter and walk away when I realized she meant my bike.

  “How did you know?”How did a waitress in Sherrard, West Virginia know an Italian motorcycle from a hundred yards away?

  “It came up quiet. And the color too.”

  Babe the Blue Ox. Did I tell her that then? I don’t know. I can’t remember how I got her into my sleeping bag, or how it happened that she stayed strapped around my waist all the way back to B
rooklyn, except that she kept on seeing stuff and clueing me in her matter-of-fact way—like I was some peculiar rock she’d picked up on the beach and couldn’t decide whether to keep or send skipping away. I was such a nitwit I didn’t even ask her how old she was. Then one day she came back from applying for a waitress job at Junior’s and wanted to know what working papers were. She had those eyes put in with dirty thumbs; they made her look older.

  In the first room, the Ames Room, I can hear Archer running—tearing back and forth through the plane of the illusion. He’s chasing Daisy. She’s finally stopped sulking over spending last night in the kids’ tent. I realize she’s flirting with my son—kind of makes sense, since she’s a young fifteen and he’s an old seven, but they never said boo to each other in Brooklyn. After seeing how much fun the kid’s having, Naomi nods toward the next room, the one with the chair on the wall but I’m torn—there are some fun ways to work the Ames Room illusion with a kid Archer’s age. He’ll love seeing me look small. Only he’s not interested in Dad right now. I decide to bypass the chair and the uneven floorboards and go straight to the hall of mirrors, everybody’s favorite. You girls are just on the cusp of being too old for all this but we’ve had two solid days of driving now and the drama of last night’s choice of tents hasn’t completely dissipated, either. I know it’s sick to pit you against each other that way but you should really blame Nora for chickening out at the last minute. If she’d come along it would have been her, Naomi, and the kids in one tent and my girls with me, in the other, like every other summer we’ve done this. The current configuration just doesn’t balance so there’s been way too much horse-trading going on. I need to draw the line but I haven’t. Drawing the line ain’t my strong suit.

  My plan for the mirror maze is to come in sidelong and get halfway down the first alley before you notice, and then start yelling, “Keep turning left,” which is the wrong advice, of course. But what I’m not prepared for is that four girls jump out at me, led by Christmas. She has a sneaky side—like the time she pulled me into the ceramics room and let me walk out with her wet gray handprint on my face. Anyway, when I come around the first corner what I see is a bevy of maidens, infinitely reflected. It’s dazzling. I wish I could freeze the moment but my camera’s in the van and anyway then you scatter, chanting “Two, four, six, eight, who do we exasperate? Three, six, nine, twelve, who’s too old to be an elf?” which you seem to have invented last night at the campsite and all find hyster ical and that does exasperate me so the moment turns dark as fast as it went bright. This is the hell of girls.

  Then you wander over to me and put your hand in my back pocket. “Gotcha!” you say but not with any malice. We stroll down the aisle of our reflections: four of us, eight of us, a kaleidoscope of big Swedes and coal-haired Peanuts uniformly blue in denim and chambray. And now my cock is pounding. You break from my side as we turn the next bend and see the other girls at the funhouse mirrors. Without hesitation, you angle your head in sideways for a beat and make an alien noise: “Oop!” The other two, who had been lamely plié-ing and waving their arms, instantaneously get the game and the three of you become a calliope or maybe a Swiss clock, jerking in and out of the frames of the three mirrors—fat, thin, and wavy—and bleating silly sounds—urk, gank, plork. It’s not the play of little children but it’s sure as shit not something three adults would spontaneously invent. You have no sense of being observed, and for a little while the cadence is effortless. Then you start to giggle and it’s done. Tough luck. The kid from the gift shop has loped over to gawk and the idiot says to me, “Got any pot?”

  “Are you insane?” I ask him in my father’s driest, meanest voice. “Do you want us all to go to jail? They’re minors! I’m their teacher! Get out of my sight.” He steps back but without any real sense of urgency. “Get your hair out of your eyes and pay attention,” I say then, in a reasonable voice. I’m trying to erase the burst of Percy that came before but the kid yells back, “Get your sluts out of my funhouse!” before closing the door on me and my retinue. I don’t know if my son knows what a slut is—but I want to protect him from the implication of something sordid.

  We’re back in the van no more than two minutes when Doria starts crying. I glue my eyes to the road and am inventing the evening’s campfire story when you say, “Look!” but not like “Look, a deer!” or “How beautiful!” but more like “I finally got the math problem right!” and you are holding up your left forearm and waggling your hand to call attention to the silver bracelet on your wrist, stolen. You’re one of the club with Naomi, and Christmas, and Tiddlywinks, and I consider turning around and making you return it then and there. But you are so proud of yourself and that kid was such a creep so we take it on the lam. I gun the van up to 70, heading north. You think you’re smarter than the rest, Peanut. You look at me like a dog looks at meat. You’re fourteen, baby, cut it out.

  I’m not going to write about what happened at the campsite, or the jail, or the settlement. You’ve got your memories and there are public records, if anyone cares. I’ve tried to make amends in various ways but the damage is done. What I’d like you to remember is that I loved you. You, Peanut; and Naomi and Doria and Archer. Back then, all I wanted was that my son not grow up to be like me.

  26

  Naomi

  In his version, I was barely just a coal smudge, a girl from a Dickens book. In my version, I saw him coming a mile off. Not him, specifically, but he was neither the first nor the last draft dodger from the East Coast on a motorbike, or in a VW bug, or whole families of them in camper vans. . . . Since I worked the counter that summer, I met a lot of them—even if they just came in looking for the john they talked to me. I had long hair that hung in my face like theirs did. I looked like I might be a member of their tribe. I knew it, too. I was shy, never said a lot, but I watched and listened and kept close track so when that big strong man with the fancy watch and the Italian motorbike showed up I was ready. I tied up the corners of my plaid shirt high on my ribcage. I said “far out” and asked for a ride. I said I didn’t need a helmet because I wanted to feel the wind in my hair.

  The ride up to the lookout point turned into a game of hide-and-seek at the table rock. When he asked me how old I was I knew he’d take me. He asked me if I knew any local folk songs and I said, “Like Little Omie?” But he didn’t even get it—that it never ends well for the girl in the song who goes along with the stranger from out of town. “Come go along with me,” says the stranger. “Have mercy on me,” says Little Omie, too late.

  27

  Nora

  Iam in bed in my mother’s old bedroom at the back of the building with a view of the water, and the Statue of Liberty, and the gaudy splendor of Lower Manhattan. Sometimes it’s hard to close my eyes with the lights off because the view out the windows is so stunning. During my mother’s lifetime my bedroom (the maid’s quarters, officially) was at the opposite end of the apartment but, when I came back last year, I couldn’t stand to sleep with the toile wallpaper and the corkboard plastered with postcards from friends I no longer know. So I installed an IKEAn bedroom suite, adopted a cat, and made Mom’s room mine.

  At least she did me the favor of dying quickly. I put it that way because I can hear her saying those words—I have heard her saying them in my head for over a year, pointing out that she did at least that much right and thereby half-acknowledging all that she did not, but without actually apologizing or listening to my side of the story. Again, this is all in my head. I’m not saying my mother was a horror. She wasn’t. But her life was not about me and I resented that. I resent it still, which is why I keep her so far back in my thoughts and why I truly haven’t mourned or even gone through the motions: no funeral, no paid obit. I put all the condolence notes in a drawer without opening them. I don’t know that I ever will. It’s enough that I live in this haunted apartment, where every doorknob knew her hand and every window, her gaze.

  At a party, not long before she died, I met
a soft-faced woman in her sixties and we wound up talking about some book or movie or story in the New Yorker that centered on a fraught mother-daughter relationship. And there was a moment of resonance between us when we looked at each other and knew that we’d been imprinted by the same flavor of momness. And then she asked me how mine was, because I was obviously of an age when moms may decline and I said, “Fine,” and she said, “Just wait.” The remark dropped between us like an anchor. Struggling to stay social, I said I’d heard the difficult ones were sometimes the hardest to lose and she nodded and then put her hand on my forearm and said, “I didn’t think I was going to survive it.” I left soon after and, walking to the subway through the West Village, I kept thinking that, no matter what I said or didn’t say or did or didn’t do, now I was going to have to suffer my mother’s death like I had never suffered anything before. Because of this stranger’s curse.

  And when I got the phone call from Bellevue (she’d been admitted the night before but hadn’t called me and the next night died alone, of a fistula), the first thing I thought of was that woman with her little paw on my arm and her long shadow. I swore to myself then that I would not be its victim, that I could prefer not to, like Bartleby, my patron saint of clerk-dom. And for the longest time all I really felt was furious. An eighty-two-year-old woman checks herself into the hospital with mysterious abdominal pain and doesn’t call her only living relative? Maybe she couldn’t face me because she knew I was about to find out the real punchline—that she’d never made a will, leaving me trapped in the terms of my grandfather’s. It’s not like I lived in a different time zone or we were estranged. I talked to her once a week, at least, about nothing. Neither of us was under any illusion that we enjoyed it but my period of not speaking to her at all had been over for five years at least. (That was when I found out that my father hadn’t actually died in 1963, she’d just thought that was the “easiest” thing to tell a seven-year-old.) But I had gotten over that, if not exactly forgiven it, and had even since then told her I loved her once when she was going in for some crazy surgery on her nose that required general anesthesia. I remember the sick feeling of suspense while I waited for the surgeon to report success, even though it was about as low risk as surgery gets, and the profound, physical relief when it was over because I did love her—then, anyway. It does seem that I do not love her now.