Plays Well With Others

by Allan Gurganus

  “Yeah,” recovering, he finally says to no one. “I thought it was right around there.” He means the car. And invites us to join him in beaming at his own vast male efficiency. I simply sit here, numb already. In the back seat. Glad at least for safety belts. Practicing my own homespun form of Zen. Trying to invent it.

  Home Safe

  y parents’ is a spacious pretty glass box overlooking a lake. Sun browses, touristy, intrigued by this much daily beauty. Cathedral ceilings look steep in a white box this unsmudged. The sun’s interest gets further split among many beveled mirrors. My mom started collecting them while still in North Carolina; she swears she only knew why once she’d hung all thirty in lakeside tropical rooms. Mirrors enlarge the blue-green view, they enhance property value and bespeak our family’s breeding and very good if oh so conventional taste. I myself feel sick to death of it. What help is it?

  Their common room overlooks a lake with its own mascot alligator. Soon as we arrive, soon as Dad hurries to mix our drinks, Mom points to a stripe floating loglike. “This one, he’s called Bosco for some reason. They change over time.”

  The lake can only support one really big one. When the latest grows six feet long, a game warden will be phoned to come fetch it. Why? Visiting dogs and grandchildren are not safe within eyesight of a wild gator expanding past that size. At Sun City Center last month, a cocker was eaten and one grandkid lost her leg. Retired folks must feel titillated watching this beast grow huge. Comforting to know that just by lifting a “bone white” portable phone, they can banish the creature, death forestalled. Still, they feed it.

  I now lean out over my parents’ deck, I see many an old Melmac plate, emptied, around the muddy lake at clocklike intervals.

  Using my credit card, I dial our circle’s hospital of choice from the kitchen-wall phone; my parents stay close to overhear key words: “shingles,” “higher dosage,” “nightsweats.”

  “But Bama, how about you? Still standing? He betterer? How worserer?” Mother finally mimes something, pointing from her chest to Dad’s. I interpret, “Bamham? Tell Robbie my folks send love and Mom remembers the Godiva chockies.” My father’s face narrows, he hears private references. He’ll sulk now. If betrayals abounded during his dry-land prime, how many must be lurking amphibious these days?

  Robert’s conscious. Marco’s about the same. Gideon holding. Suddenly after years of house parties, he’s back to painting all the time. So many sick, and me in Florida!

  I can finally settle on one white couch as my parents appear decorous on its mate. Drinks in hand, ice creating its own civil music against leaded crystal, we’re safer for these; we can now properly face each other. “Well, well,” Dad ventures, hearty. “We got us at least one son home for Christmas.”

  Thanks a lot.

  “Cheers,” I lie. We sip, pretending—with hands fused around clinking cylinders—that we three can take the booze or leave it. Right.

  “So,” Mom says, smiling. “You’re really here.”

  “No doubt about it. You both look great.” The visit has commenced. The box step, three-quarter waltz time. No fast moves or sudden stops.

  They do look great. It is commonly considered desirable that a person’s children be good looking. But rarely are you told how helpful handsomeness is in parents. My own folks’ longtime tidiness and glamour have made their countervailing tensions somewhat easier to bear. Maybe I was drawn to Robert and Angie for a simple reason: My parents are better looking than I. Odd, but that’s actually been quite disappointing for my folks and me. At least I’m smarter. But, of course, this has also been disappointing for me; since it’s invisible to them. Except during Jeopardy. Which should come on in, what? Twenty-one minutes, please? When that game show’s rolling, I alone answer. Depending on the category, I get about 83 percent. And my parents, having paid for my education, gloat like couched Boscos fed steady spaniels.

  “Darlin’?” Mother starts. “We feel you do look a bit overworked. The color is not good. You push yourself so, like he did, really.” She swings her white head toward a neutral man beside her. “Why not take it easier? Come enjoy our sun more? There’s Robert, of course. We know you’ll want to do right by him. But mightn’t you be struggling too hard with all those other poor sick fellows? Aren’t you helping lots of people you barely knew socially? Weighing on you, are they? Why not cut back some?”

  I shrug. I fight down an emotion. “Number One,” Father says, cryptic, but we know he means look out for …

  (Between these visits, I recall my folks’ charm. It’s their uncomprehending Republican opacity, I block. —Just as the pain of childbirth is programmed to be forgotten between required screaming bouts of ouchly recall.)

  Her rushing to this subject, their wordless agreement about my evil looks, it feels like yet another betrayal. I’m too tired to protect myself. I’ve already given everything away.

  I sigh. I only seem to sigh like this around my folks. I take two longish bourbon swallows. Dusk is making outlines of the royal palms across my parents’ lake. They say they want me to try their clubhouse’s new Olympic pool tomorrow; I fear they’ll see my knife scar.

  “So”—it’s Dad—“you writing a lot, I guess.”

  My parents still work as a tag team. First one gets you around the legs, then the other piles on.

  “Some. Robert gave us an assignment six months back. To try and figure out our own idea of Paradise. I called mine ‘Toward a More Precise Identification of the Newer Angels.’* I imagined how new angels might get recognized by older ones. But no magazine’ll touch the piece. Maybe it seems strange, coming in without a context. I brought it with me, figured maybe to reread it on the plane home. I think it’s good—But, writing? Less than I’d like. I guess it’ll be there. I certainly won’t lack for experience, will I? But right now, my book feels like less of an emergency … than this other.”

  “Earning a living is always an emergency, son.”

  “Fine sunset you got going here.” I take the coward’s way out. I haven’t the grit for a brawl tonight. Not while feeling this beat, not after his star-search for our Buick.

  “Howbout another drink, kids? Anybody else?” I dash to their club-worthy wet bar, its bent chrome faucet, green marbletop—the niche, our local altar to that favored Episcopal household god: a full undiscounted bottle of the very best.

  I study sky. My folks remark on today’s postcard sunset. Their lake doubles its lurid beauty. Large waterbirds are flying over in blackest silhouette. Dad compares this sunset unfavorably to the one in October: “Less yellow tonight, purpler south-southwest.”

  “Aha,” I respond, nursing further bourbon.

  Dad explains how that one in October was truly “a red-letter day … literally, come to think of it!” Then he laughs toward more ragged laughing unto coughing into redfaced shock. I know this. Mom, fighting for the casual, smiles, pats his back. He lifts his right arm, now his left. Poor guy’s lungs are shot. Fibrosis. It killed his father; it recently killed his older brother.

  Dad chain-smoked during WW II and most of the fifties. After one of his hacking spasms, I, concerned, once asked about those Chesterfields’ effect on his wind. He only blinked; told me he had no idea what I was talking about, and why had I been born such a goddamn pessimist? That shut me up. Was I unconsciously gloating?

  I need a third drink. Or would this might would be maybe make the four, fourth? They watch me, their eyes look light if concerned as I chat toward their bar again. I’m blathering too much about New York, non-plague art-world gossip of no interest to them; but I can think of nothing else to say; inwardly I panic at their lack of ice. I find it hard to believe my intelligent father could misplace his whole car; I find it easier to forget. I start again to understand my mother’s plight. Some life sentence, a “happy” marriage.

  We now discuss my brothers, my young nieces—their latest test scores, accomplishments at soccer, leading roles in school musical comedies. “Though I must say
I can’t believe that kids these days still want to do Oklahoma.” My parents wince at my disloyalty toward the forties that spawned me.

  “What time does the news come on here? I mean national.” It’s my fallback position. But a smell intervenes. Hidden beyond the golf course vista, a single distant orange grove must remain yet “undeveloped.” We know it is still there because, this evening—through huge windows—a smell drifts across their lake. I turn my head, as toward a sound. Here comes a scent so delicate you doubt it’s genuine. —Can such an evolved sweetness exist this side of paradise?

  “You see?” my father says. “We got it pretty much made here. They cut our grass every other Thursday. But if you plant anything extra, you tend that. We’ve planted. So I do have a couple outdoor chores for you tomorrow. If you’re willing …” I nod.

  “And, of course, able.”

  “Willing, yes. Able? that’s always been your call, has it not?”

  I didn’t actually say that, did I? A glance at Mom hints that yeah, I probably did.

  “Sure.” I try. “Sounds good. Bet we’ll have the weather for it, this being Florida. Is Jeopardy right after the news here or must we slog first through Wheel of Fortune?”

  “We like it.” His bitterness—briefly hidden out of shame over the car loss—now marches fully forward. “After dinner, we tend to like our Wheel, son.”

  “But the game involves no skill.”

  “Just shows how young he is. ’m I, right, Helen?” He gives Mom yet one more chance to show her loyalty, and disown me. “How are we for ice?” She rises; I see how much ground he’s lost with her. I avert my eyes, and proceed with usual cruise-control courtesy. “So, what else … ? How the Albertsons doing?”

  Task-Directed

  y father says, “You must be tired from traveling. Big day tomorrow, work to do. Best turn in.” He goes to stand. Then Dad decides he can’t get up gracefully, can’t rise at all, so he shrugs to indicate a change of mind—but, hey, he could if he wanted to. Mother and I watch. We try not engaging our usual literary-critical match-set follow-up after-glance.

  With me somehow this silvering and not sick yet, with me here at Christmas, I note how the decorations are returned verbatim from last year; they were merely moved upstairs wholesale then down again, and the tiny artificial tree rigged and ornamented, once. Mom’s former deck-the-halls rituals feel, by now, too much like work. I face a seated white-haired man and, rising myself, smile, “Sleep well, all.”

  “So,” Mother says. “But, darl, do wait, not yet, our favorite news show’ll be on in no time. They catch people doing things. They take the camera right into the stores. Dick, where’s the thing, where’s the remote thingum, sweetie? I know that I, given my sieve of a mind lately, just cain’t keep track of it or much of anything else anymore.” Her Southern belle accent thickens, as she stands, efficient, caught in another geisha act. She gives me a look begging me not to mind how she flatters, trying to save him with one more “poor little me.” Same ole same ole.

  After their Eleven O’Clock Roundup, after brushing my teeth, I run into my white-haired father. He is wearing a terry robe, is stooped in the middle of the dark hallway, mumbling, enraged if contained. He has dropped the remote control onto thick white carpeting. In trying to bend and fetch it, he’s lost his breath then his balance. I see that he is pinioned here, one arm to the wall. I recall Robert’s arm, his weight on it, him hunched over her.

  “Let me. Please.” I bend, agile. And as Dad straightens, the robe flips open. I, in rising, find myself confronting nudity. His body is still his; everything’s lowered two inches if still right there. But his genitals are precisely my own. Mirrored, I avert my eyes. And he risks falling, to tie the belt.

  I let him scramble back toward modesty as I palm the unit his way and hurry by. He flashes me a look, radioactive.

  “Sleep well. Merry Christmas, Dad.”

  I know to leave him. I’ll let him hobble off at his own rate, gasping, unseen. I’ll wait just inside the guest room. Only if I hear him fall will I run back. (But, wait, surely, the living room’s remote doesn’t work their bedroom’s smaller set?)

  He’s like some child too tired to admit the world’s one true fault just now is: he himself feels far too exhausted by it. I know the feeling. A child this worn out, instead of hauling himself to bed, will do literally anything to resist inevitable sleep.

  During my good-night peck her way, Mother promises, “Mornings, he’s better.” She’s doing a last science-lab wipedown of their kitchen. I try and give her a hug one beat longer than our usual, one meant to prove I see, I sympathize. But Mom breaks it off and veers away from me toward the dirty glass I left in their sink. I blame her pride. It’s the pride of a person willing to sit three hours allowing another proud person to find an unlost car. Her pride grieves me like some molar hurting because it is, precisely, my own—throbbing.

  So let’s see, I got Dad’s big prick and Mom’s huge pride. Thanks a lot. Stand back, world.

  Window Treatment

  stagger, literally, stagger off to bed. Their guest room is decorated with scallop shell motifs, rancid coral pastels. Only a decorator could’ve perpetrated this. Tonight the whole scheme strikes me as impersonal, then sinister. One entire wall of family pictures stretches floor to ceiling. At first even this appears arbitrary, like those silver-framed images you see scattered across the mantels of model rooms in finer department store windows.

  Here is Dad, wearing his Army uniform, being kissed after a USO show by Betty Grable herself on tiptoe. Here again is Colonel Increase Hartley, but blown up and oil-painted beneath excessive Angie-like rouge that he plainly resents. I bend over one photo in its certificate frame. This is the single picture of my father as a child. A sepia record of his own dad’s grocery store. The image is half obscured by one corner of this dresser. Half-hidden on purpose? It’s the single unclassy blot on this escutcheon of a wall—all orthodontia, great legs, horse events, staged garden parties, award ceremonies for us.

  This one boyhood photo of Dad must’ve been snapped at the Depression’s lowest ebb; maybe for some grocery store newspaper ad? Because I can’t imagine people so poor hiring a photographer to memorialize their plight. But maybe they only look poor to me, from here. Maybe, for them, store ownership was a first mythic step toward the riches they achieved, a first step-up that now lets me look so far back down on them?

  In the shop, one blond cur is shown scrurrying from the flashbulb seeking to save it. There’s a butcher block; its unrefrigerated side of beef gives evidence of being hacked at; the meat is mostly covered with damp cheesecloth meant to minimize the flies.

  Between pyramids of canned beans, my grandfather poses. He wears wireless specs hooked around big ears, his hair is parted dead-center. Instead of making him looking like some Princeton math professor of the period, he resembles a Grand Ole Opry backup banjo player—way too proud of today’s fresh-laundered collar. One big hand rests atop a toylike silver cash register. His children, all under age twelve, man four counters. All stand on produce boxes. Something in their will to do this right makes me recall my threatened friends. A now-stylish aunt seems to have just bobbed her own hair at the butcher’s block with those same greasy tools. The family’s expression is uniform, efficient as their aprons. It is set and lipless. Duty makes a mouth. Duty films the eyes with owners’ suspicion. The kids’ faces are, for me, the embodiment of a dour yet prideful phrase, “The working class.” Santa’s infant elves as alienated labor.

  My father, the youngest, is shown at maybe four. His platinum hair is worn in a charming bowlcut. But features underneath pinch themselves into a scared country look. Would such a child ever be allowed to believe in Santa Claus? Would such a child ever let another child believe?

  Most striking: the adult-sized aprons on all the children. On the youngest, the apron’s skirt seems folded up and over four full times. Then its strings get knotted hard behind. However scared of the flashbulb the kid
appears, he wears this bib with such pride. It could be armor in how he presents it: “Just like Dad’s. We own this whole store. Can I help you, Mister?”

  As record-keeper, as sudden caretaker to my pals, tonight I feel weirdly identified with this solemn, unthanked kid. His sense of duty is already mapped out, it will be the death of him, and yet it’s the single way he sees to live.

  At my most charitable moments (which seem fewer lately, given epic woes waiting back in boobytrapped New York), it helps to recall my father’s long climb, his dreary playless start. Instead of a treehouse, a grown man’s apron origamied to diaper size. No childhood, a Depression.

  This might’ve convinced him to let his own sons have more fun. Instead, almost from our first efficient steps, he set us all to work. A witty older neighbor liked to call our house and its sons, The Works Projects Administration.

  My first memories of Dad still involve his impossible commissions. Such chores would tax the stamina of a strong man twenty-five. A child aged three just cannot fake the manual skill required to wield a man-sized hoe. Concussions bruise young palms so new. The principle of leverage depends upon a figure standing at least five feet tall, not twenty-six inches long.

  The tasks Dad assigned us seemed created to baffle and shame sons born lucky in a richer time. If the world had grown tail-finned with postwar luxury, handwork with old tools stayed baseline mean, and would always be instructive.

  We lived in a beautiful house with a two-acre yard. The privet hedge that guarded it from neighbors was fully eighty-four feet long. (At twelve, I bought a retractable tape measure just so I could know this. I still know it.) One ideal home became our Parris Island. Dad only stepped into the yard with us, evenings after office hours, to check on our completed labors. We’d forgot one hula fringe of grass left undisciplined down the middle of the drive. Wasn’t that a one-inch dip in the hedge? Our work never really proved quite right. There seemed to be some high tax on a Dad’s ever uttering, “Good.”