Plays Well With Others

by Allan Gurganus

  Our concern for longevity focused mostly on our work; personal health became a metaphor for that. We’d been learning to be artists for so long. I had been blundering through, just trying to assemble my profession’s alphabet. I had only worked up, say, to the letter J. Imagine dying before achieving the essential noble elegance of S!

  We both overdressed. “Is that your wedding or your funeral drag?” she asked. Success had not softened a certain bluntness in her. Bama climbed into my cab wearing the same copper-colored suit last seen at Robert’s concert. I felt a moment’s hurt. She had not scared up a new outfit for this and me? As if getting your blood test results constituted some Date of Dates. But you know? for me, that day, it did.

  We would now take only taxis everywhere. All those hassles that were still in our power to avoid, we would dodge today. Luck cannot be planned and yet we all keep trying.

  She said she had forgotten something, then rushed back upstairs, reappearing in a fifties hat, a clamp-on. False violets frothed all over it. She’d put on the pearls and now, stark eyes square upon me, kissed them. “As a sick sort of charm. Why not? Hartley?—My mother loves me. My mother is a pathetic social climber eager only for those parties where they’d sneer at her the most. If I got sick, a mom like mine that just couldn’t have me in Savannah. Picture what it’d do to her dicey social life. Funny, I wouldn’t even blame her. She cannot succeed. True, she told me if I came up here and tried, something terrible would happen. But Jewel Fern basically loves me. She wouldn’t wish real evil on me, Hart. Of that I’m sure.”

  “Here here.” I touched her right hand, today very clean. Luck. She lifted the bottom strand of pearls for me to kiss. I told her that, if either of us turned out to have … trouble, we could move to North Carolina. I missed it more and more. You could kick aside a million Carolina doormats, you’d find a million house keys. It was pathetic. It was becoming just our sort of thing. If we slowed down, gave each other space, we might be roomies. She could find a tobacco warehouse to paint in, they were cheap these days. What held us here except the cobweb ties to Robert and our others?

  “I’d only go if I got to fade away in the bed.”

  “You think his mom would let us have it? Doubt that. Still, I’m learning to ask. You know what pineapples stand for.”

  I settled against the cab’s backseat, fighting sentiment, resisting memory.

  “The Metropolitan Museum,” I told our driver. “And sir? This young lady I’m with back here? Has some of her own paintings hanging in the Met’s collection.” Strictly speaking, this was not yet true. They did own two charcoal drawings. The headguy had put a reserve on four oils but he’d never quite committed. Still, this seemed a day for accentuating the positive—I mean, the upbeat.

  “No shit,” the driver said, making us laugh.

  Then he adjusted his rearview mirror. Bama, feeling the beloved curative warmth of being watched, sent one chaste if lipsticky smooch his way. She had perfected the whore’s trick of innocent convent eyes—unaware of the lower mouth’s solitary freelance sluttishness. The combination proved a classic killer.

  “Wow,” he said “And here I been thinking all lady painters were dogs. But you? You have way more fox-type blood in you, hunh?—No offense, Mister.”

  She batted the amber eyes, touched one corner of her mouth. Her voice came out all starlet breathiness. “Dri-ver? Don’t mind this one back here. He’s just an old queer that pimps for me. Usually he tries to get guys to give us subway tokens, but me? I’m ambitious. I moving on to cabfare. —You free, sir? Later?”

  We soon stood before our Vermeers, saying what we’d each said so many times before, but gaining rosary-strength from refondling our own tired, informed opinions. We taxied to the failing Bendel’s and bought Bama a sterling pin, biomorphic. One salesgirl (smocked, silksleeves, face all Kabuki paintbox ceramic) must’ve recognized my friend from the White House spread. “You?” she flirted. “You’ve just been in something. Don’t tell me. You’re either on a soap or did an article about somebody ver’ big. Where do I know you from? Isn’t this, I mean, aren’t you, like, very very recent?”

  We arrived at the clinic early. Too recent. I could tell it made my darling nervous, overmuch time to kill. Promptness was my style. Careless, I had not adjusted it for her, hers.

  Now we were stuck here; there was nothing but warehouses in Chelsea then; you couldn’t invent a short wandering errand to spend money. So while Bama smoked out under our ancestral sycamores, I paced these too-familiar rooms. The young woman who’d first interviewed us nodded greetings. I could see she remembered. That seemed a solid sign. Right? I was still scouting everywhere for harbingers—but only happy ones, please. I had become, as my friends now put it, “The Omen Queen.”

  I volunteered to go first. I showed my paper number. I recalled my fifth-grade teacher’s story of Walter Raleigh throwing his cape across mud to spare Elizabeth’s hem brocade. But wasn’t he imprisoned or beheaded anyway? Oh, well.

  I visited the bathroom, I’d been pissing like a racehorse for days. Was this pre-results jitters or some lethal health sign? When I returned, I saw Bama alone indoors. Under her violets, the face seemed locked. Beneath their NO SMOKING sign, she sat wrapped in fumes, sat rocking, an autistic in her corner. She appeared about seven years old. Then, as I drew nearer, about seventy. Soon as she spied me hurrying to help, both hands flew up. “Don’t, touch, me, right, now, honey, okay? Just …” Right then they called my number. “Either way,” she whispered as I turned to face my news. “In his magic bed. Done deal? Be it you or be it me, or both. Let’s go down with each other. We never never got around to going down on each other; let’s give this other a try. In any State of the Union, even a Southern one. Okay, Best Thing Left Me?” I nodded.

  It only takes one person in your life.

  Moving down the hall, I felt so very lanky. A mantis Hartley. Whenever I’m terrified, as when poor Robert got mugged, I’m always sure my legs are made of hollow guttering material. But this hall did seem narrow enough to catch me, a disciplining splint.

  They say at crucial moments, your life will fan like face cards splayed before you. Highlights. A movie’s “coming attractions”; only it’s “going attractions,” outgoing, and your own.

  Some of that happened. Odd what reached me. I felt a baking soda taste at the back of my mouth, it was Duty. A taste like putting your fingers to your lips after you’ve handled someone else’s house keys. I flashed on how my father used to stand out back after work. With only a little evening light left, the old man (young) would linger on our flagstone patio. Arms crossed, he’d just stare for whole minutes at nothing but the yard. “Look at him.” My brothers made a joke of it. “The hawk expecting mice.” Odd, till this clinical moment, Dad’s stillness, his concentration, had seemed mysterious. But rickety as I was today, I now knew—he had been guarding. Dad, his day’s work done, stood out there trying to become our own Good Sign. He was staring at whatever fertilized green he had achieved. Even while doubting his continuing success, Dad was bodily warding off the end of it.

  My parents lately had felt so vivid to me. When I gave Robert a sponge bath, I got these odd flashes of two young people bathing me, an infant. All this weary sudden tenderness toward a poker-neutral father and his chipper sacrificing wife. Why now? Learned where? Arrived too late?

  Into the room veered that same pleasant black woman who’d first led us through our chances. On her desk, I recognized a photo of the charming kid from the cardboard castle.

  She settled, holding my file. It looked too fat for my own short history here. A lousy swollen omen. I started, “Must be hard all day, giving out the news, hunh?”

  “Yes, well. The good feels good and the bad it never is exactly a cinch. But thank you for thinking of me.”

  “So, worked here long?”

  “Yes, but I believe we should just go ahead and do this, if only for the sake of your ‘wife’ out there, whoever.” So I handed her my fat
al number. I remembered Angie’s piece of pinewood painted white and black and 282.

  Seated at her desk, the woman accepted my digit. Then, inhaling once, she placed mine over its sticky-backed replica just inside the folder. I received a stuttering vision, all our friends, lives lived so all together. By now, I could only attach my mortality to theirs. In lieu of a Distributorship, considering how tentative and “early” my own work was, what else, but them, could Hartley rightly claim?

  On my bent right index fingerjoint, I bit. I made this hurt some. I studied the top of the woman’s head, her neat modified afro, the globe; I considered the shape of her face aimed downward. There, I saw a vexing outward, mask of comedy, face of tragedy? I never before felt how close they were. A grin requires more muscles. After she looked up, I dully understood it was a smile. Her mouth moved. I heard nothing but sound’s subsequent music. I could read her hand signs, I could tell that I was being urged to keep my rubbers on. I deduced all symptoms of good news but as a deaf person might. “Thank you, thank you.” I took her hand as if she had originated my verdict, not just conveyed it.

  “God, but I feel … not exactly happy, but very … present, you know? Never want to lose this.”

  “Good luck,” she opened the door for me. Alabama had exercised her spousal privilege; had taken the plastic chair just before my cubicle. When she saw my face, she knew, she hid her mouth behind two hands. She bowed over her knees. One eye seemed undergoing an oil change, only her right eye’s mascara blurred all down her cheek. The idiotic hat, so frilled and purple, got knocked at a slight angle that made it far more darling and much further hers. She had, I decided, never so overtly demonstrated her love for me. She was seated in a little white safe plywood corner, and I felt, standing, bending over her, that if I could just keep my darling co-survivor here, if we could simply spend the rest of our lives in this nook locked within this schoolhouse eating brought-in Chinese food, everything would be okay—really. She kissed me, then kissed her own pearls, and we were all over each other. But as in the old days when we yet pretended that each other was a boy and therefore still forgave each other everything.

  “Well, your good health sure don’t spring from any tendency to stay indoors and keep your pants up, do it, tramp? If you got away with it, maybe there’s a slender hope for your way more virtuous mother here.”

  The same woman who’d offered me my good news—who did this all day for a living!—stood waiting, stood looking after us. She was smiling if in a neutral way. I still saw such tension in her face. I loved this woman’s involvement and marveled how she kept herself open to such daily kindness, daily torture, and for complete strangers. It is shaming I cannot recall her name. Jean? Grace? One syllable. Then I remembered her kid saying, “My mom helps sick people.”

  Alabama asked if I’d wait out front “and not right here at the end of the high-dive.” She said she didn’t want me to see her face so soon after her finding out, either way.

  “Whatever you wish, Princess of my particular life story. Anything.” I settled in the waiting area, no fishtank, no magazines, but at least no scolding posters. I pressed together the butts of my palms. I dug my elbows into either knee. A little intentional pain might keep my head clear. I wondered why it was taking so long. Then saw that maybe only ninety seconds had passed. First I told myself I was doing some sort of forearm isometrics. One hand somewhat strengthening the other.

  “You prayin’ too?” a rich voice spoke beside me and there sat a young Hispanic man in a red sports coat, his moustache so trimmed it looked drawn on. “Who you waiting? Wife?” I just nodded. “Is it Take the Blood Day? Or Big News Day?” I told him. “My ole lady too.” He shook his head. “Me, I’ve done some crazy shit over time. If she’s got to pay for it, I’m … I just don’t know.” And then he pressed his own hands wrist to wrist as mine were. I guess I had been praying, if in a gym-based West Village sort of way.

  His eyes closed as he said aloud. “Let both his and mine be okay, Lord. Don’t take it out on them, what should have grabbed our sorry asses, right, Lord?”

  I said, “Right.” Thinking of Robert, I amen-ed that last part, too.

  Came a blurred commotion, his wife ran through the lobby on noisiest high heels, did a little seeking U-turn, then piled atop him. “HomeplateSafe, babes.” Laughing, she dropped into his lap, arms laced around him. It was a joy to see them gyrate deep into each other. I found myself dissolved, just watching strangers. The waiting room’s other omen-queens (everybody) smiled, wagged their heads. “You see?” one boy encouraged another already visibly sick.

  I was so caught up in this couple’s drama—even the toughest of the nurses half-grinning—I failed to notice someone else. She had to tap me on the shoulder. It was her first entrance or exit I could ever recall missing and I didn’t know if that was a good sign or a bad.

  Turning, I saw she had applied new lipstick, powdered her nose. “You’ll just have to put up with me a while longer. Hartley? Now I’m even more immortal.” I hugged her too hard. The other couple congratulated us—not wasting time with names or details, our situations being identical. It did feel wonderful. Air whistled over ear openings. I felt like the tail of an Airedale, wagged.

  On the bright street, I was determined to act on our good news. I kept walking backward before her, the way I’d first pursued Robert. I kept explaining we had to do something, something fun and right now.

  “You’re such a literalist, Happy Burger.”

  “But we’re required to commemorate. No waiting, either. I took a correspondence in being Pagan. Presbyterianism had a headlock on me for the longest dern time. But us two? We just got our Ph.D. in Happy, BamieGirl.”

  Just to be out in sunlight holding hands! Look how yellow those damn cabs are! So I pulled her into a Baskin Robbins ice-cream place and ordered us triple scoops. She had a little lactose intolerance but that could not be helped today. I flashed the young clerk a big bill; and it was only after we’d strolled a few blocks south, pastel cones already dripping before us, I understood I’d been shortchanged. He’d stiffed me about fifteen bucks. But, I told Bama, instead of my rushing back and making the usual New York scene, today I would have to let it pass. That was part of our deal. It’d certainly be the best fifteen big ones I ever spent. Imagine: For that amount, Alabama Byrnes and Hartley Mims jr., would get to live and know each other into ripe (even rotten) old age.

  We talked about whether to rush our good news to St. Vincent’s and Robert, sinking fast into his own un-news un-knowing. I favored cabbing straight there, though maybe we’d deliver the news obliquely? She voted against—said that, however glad he’d be for us, it would fill him with such a backwash of understandable sadness. And we mustn’t put him (or ourselves) in the position of having to see Robert feel all this, you know?

  We’d planned to head out for a high-calorie dinner, but she said the excitement-torture had been a bit too much too much for her, and could we just let the Rocky Road ice cream—expensive as it’d been—be down payment on some later feast? I agreed, knowing I would go home and phone my entire address book. I had all this joy I planned to bounce around. Nothing could break my speed. I mapped out the next nine books I’d write, maybe ten. I couldn’t sleep for the relief, hang-gliding. Then the stuttering emergency-brake questions. What this meant. Which role would the mixed blessing of surviving demand and provide? Was I up to it? Could I choose not to be?

  As a boy, I had imagined faking my own death, attending my own funeral incognito, escaping to St. Kitt’s, dyeing my hair silver-blond, starting life over as a tanned good-listener bartender named … Chip. History-less, fun, cheap…. Chip.

  Or to stay?

  Rearranging the Deckchairs

  trangely early in Robert’s sickness, just after that first scary fever spike, he turned my way before any of it really showed (beyond the spots, two periods, full-stops), even before first wasting made him briefly even more ethereal, more planed and perfect-looking. It was
during coffee at our table. (Ossorio had just bought a huge Italian copper espresso machine, brass faucets and a chickenlike eagle perched wobbly on top. Must’ve cost him everything. Gone, the boilermaker’s Cuban gizmo all jury-rigged and soldered. Ang pronounced this sudden yuppie upgrade “the kiss of death.”)

  While our other pals gathered at the counter to admire this new caffeine laboratory, Robert asked me offhand, “When I fly back to Cedar Rapids?” (the rich baritone by now sounded mothily bigger than he) “you’ll be going with me, Hartley?”

  “‘When you fly back …’” I started, knowing he’d never return there willingly. Oh.

  So I rushed in quick with, “Yeah. Count on that.”

  “Good. I know you’ll know all the scenes of all the childhood crimes. Like our leaky red brick gym where we put on …”

  “The ‘Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea’ Junior-Senior Prom …”

  “And the organ loft at First Methodist where …”

  “Professor Tilman, ancient bachelor and Minister of Music, asked you to climb to the third-floor organ loft, where the big pipes and the little were all closeted, asked you to hide there naked and feel his highest and lowest notes played from downstairs where he couldn’t even see you. And said you must tell him later how (you were about twelve, right?) each note vibrated within each and every part of your body, all …”

  “And my dad’s and mom’s church …”

  “Yeah, I’ll see the Gustafson family sanctuary up close and personal …”

  “My mother is a good musician. Her choir is solid. She’s sophisticated enough to write her own vocal setting of the Barber ‘Adagio’ but she’s sweet enough to believe she did it first. I’ve been savage about them, but you’ll like my parents. I’m glad you’ll meet them. End of subject. Another con leche, baby?”

  “Gracias.” I watched him get to the counter. Our friends made room for him, the other ones Ossorio called “my poor hurt white baby birds.” Friends’ arms closed around Robert, half holding our six-footer. I sat here and forced myself to know what he’d meant. So now he had his passport stamped. For his comeback to Cedar Rapids, called C.R. by Iowa insiders. Return fare. His visa of reentry, with me upright, riding in coach, riding shotgun to protect him far better this time and—in the unpressurized cargo hold, our darling Robert, boxed …