American Innovations: Stories (12 page)

The building belonged to a distant aunt of mine, a wealthy can-do woman who lived on another continent. And seeing as I lived on this continent, and was in a cash state that left me without a strong opinion on the tax code, I did not decline my aunt’s offer of living in the otherwise empty building, making myself available to show the place when opportunities arose, and just generally being there to make sure it was OK. I moved on in. The switch of neighborhoods was somehow reason enough for me to stop seeing any friends. I didn’t sign up for cable, and so had neither Internet nor television. And the radio, I don’t know, I’ve never liked it

At first it seemed a kind of happy decadence, to live like that. But I guess I got a bit out of sorts. I remember a midmorning when I was regretting an outfit of a particular pair of jeans and a brash yellow sweater, and then, when I stepped out to get the mail, I realized I was in my undershirt and pajama shorts; I realized that I’d never put on the regrettable outfit in the first place. Another afternoon I found myself anxious about the upcoming election, but then, walking past a poster for a newly released action movie, I realized that no, it was March and not October, and the election had been decided months earlier. One Monday: I was under the impression that I had stocked the refrigerator with Armenian string cheese, too much of it, so much of it that I’d need to eat it at two meals a day for a full week in order to keep it from going to waste, and then I went to the refrigerator, I found no string cheese there at all, just a sack of apples that I thought I’d only contemplated buying but then hadn’t. That was the day I met my neighbor, Eddy.

When he saw me there in the foyer, he startled. His hair was long and unwashed, and he was carrying
Being and Time
, which didn’t immediately make me dislike him, maybe because I liked his hair and maybe because he carried it like it was a car repair manual. Actually maybe I startled first, before him.

I introduced myself as the niece of the landlady. I felt very nineteenth century doing that.

“Yeah, she’s so nice,” he said. “She’s letting me stay in my place awhile longer.”

I figured he was lying, but I also don’t kick puppies. He went up the stairs. I went out the front door. Well, good, I thought. I’d been kind of spooked living in that building all alone. After that foyer meeting, when I’d hear all those noises that old buildings inevitably make, I would think, Oh, that must be Eddy, opening his door, flipping a light switch, pouring water over ramen noodles. Eddy looked through an old photo album, opened seltzer cans, caressed a fussy and small black cat I’d come to believe in. He creased pages in
Being and Time
, the only book, in my mind, that he had. It wasn’t exactly love, but it was better than the emotions that had preceded it. I’d rather not go into those emotions.

*   *   *

A week or so later I experienced a repeat of the phantom string cheese episode. Except this time there was only one apple left in the fridge, and it didn’t look so great. I put on the brash yellow sweater that I’d not yet had the chance to regret in real life and ventured out. The string cheese mistake reprise had given me a scare, and so I resolved to go farther than the corner grocery. I needed to get out more, I decided. About seven blocks away, I found a little family-run-looking gyro place. I went on in, making the bells that hung on the handle jingle as I did. The sound was as if somewhere an old-fashioned filmstrip needed to be advanced.

At the back of the shop a man was pressing a waxed paper cup against the lever for a fountain Coke. I really love fountain Coke. My whole family does. Maybe that’s why I found myself walking straight over there, to right next to that man, to get myself a Coke—I could pay later, it seemed like that kind of place—and then that man—something about the tilt of his neck produced a tingle of recognition—mumbled “goddammit” as foam ran over the edge of his soda cup. Memories ambushed me: endless rounds of gin rummy, my dad drenched in sweat after a run wearing one of his button-up work shirts, a track made up of old tires submerged in a field, piles of pistachio shells. Sometimes I called up these little father memories on purpose, but they weren’t in the habit of arriving unbeckoned. That neck, that “goddammit”—they were familiar. But it couldn’t be my father; he’d been dead for more than a dozen years, a baker’s dozen, technically. But even if he’d been dead for just a day, it still would have been dead enough for it not to be him, there, cursing a soda machine.

I walked away from the soda machine, no soda in hand. I went casually about my business. I paid for my canned drink from the cooler, ordered a gyro, paid for that, too, waited, and then, with a filled red plastic basket in hand, I looked around for a seat.

He did look just like my dad. The way my dad looked thirteen years ago anyway. Not a day older. It was even kind of a good hair day for that man, and my dad always looked a bit younger when his hair was on the greasy side, and so a little darker, and that was how this man was looking, with his now mostly emptied wax cup of fountain Coke. He was seated at a corner table. He half smiled at me. Maybe I was staring.

He didn’t say my name, or call me little cough drop, or numkin, or ask me how I was doing, or say It’s been a long time, hasn’t it? He just said to me, lightly, “You should sit here.”

Spilled yogurt sauce on our table glistened as if refracting the grandeurs of the sunken city of Atlantis; stray salt crystals reflected fluorescence back at madcap angles. Or at least that was my mood. My father pawed some napkins, wiped his forehead with them; onions always made him sweat.

I asked him if he lived nearby.

“Sort of,” he said. Then: “Not really.” Then: “Not originally.” He finished his meal quickly.

As he exited, those bells on the doorknob rang.

Had I slipped through a wormhole of time? An advertisement poster on the wall showed a blond woman with eighties bangs leaning in to take a bite of gyro while a caption offered pronunciation guidance. But it was hard to take “yee-ros” as evidence; all the gyro places I’ve ever visited have been outdated.

*   *   *

That night Eddy paced his apartment. A creaking that increased in pitch, then decreased. Increased, then decreased, like the breathing of an enormous man. He was wondering, I decided, whether he should come pay me a visit.

The next day I returned to the gyros place. When I walked in, that chain of bells jingled so beautifully. Much more beautifully than the day before. I thought of the underwater warbling of sirens. “It’s nice to see you again,” my dad called out across the narrow restaurant.

I ordered a beer with my lunch, which I never do. I got a Coke, too. My dad’s hair didn’t look quite as good as it had the day before. But when I asked for the yogurt sauce bottle and he passed it to me, I found myself thinking of the vast distances between nuclei and electrons, the tremendous nothingness of matter, the dizzying transformation of energy, and how magnificent a feat this was, my father passing the yogurt bottle. He was amazing. An amazing man. We were all amazing.

We got to talking about gin rummy, and I guess I invited the man over to play for a bit. We played for hours. What was weird was that it was very normal. And the whole building seemed happy. There was laughter in the stairwell, cloppity footsteps, old music playing; the lyrics to “Georgy Girl” by The Seekers made their way to me. Eddy was having a party? It was like real estate staging taken to another level; someone visiting would have felt impulsively moved to buy, I think. Although on some level all that “life” kind of creeped me out. An old friend of mine, Betsy, once told me a story of having roomed in a haunted house. What she meant by haunted house was that she had heard that everyone who had stayed there had been haunted. There’d once been a suicide, there was a thought that might be the ghost. Anyhow, Betsy was dreading the haunting. Which didn’t arrive, didn’t arrive, didn’t arrive. Then one night it did. A doorknob rattling, pacing, a low moaning sound … the whole works.

But then that was it. Just that one visit, that one night. And Betsy thought, Ghost, why did you leave me? Have I done something right?

Next morning I noticed that the one clock in my place had stopped. It wasn’t a fancy grandfather clock, or a charming old windup, or a pocket watch on an old brass chain. Just this little LED thing of mine, which has worked for years and years. Survived many a power surge, many a move. No more. I felt a little discouraged. But having no idea what time it was gave me a valid excuse to seek out Eddy. I could ask Eddy about the time. Just about that.

On the other side of Eddy’s door I heard footsteps. I knocked. The footsteps abruptly stopped. “Eddy?” There was no answer. Was he worried I would complain about the noise from the party? “Eddy? It’s just that my clock stopped working.” Maybe he thought I was going to try to kiss him. Maybe that was his version of a nightmare. I knocked one more time. More nothing.

People have moods; that’s certainly something I know firsthand. I try not to judge. I went back down the stairs. For a bit the quiet was, well, deafening, but after a while—obviously I don’t know after how long—the pacing upstairs resumed. Other odd noises, too. Squeaks. A couple of chirrups. Something that sounded like newspapers being folded.

Eventually—the sun was still high—I walked out to the gyro place. Those bells jangled in a mediocre way when I entered. That soda fountain was there, also the smell of fresh-cut onions. I didn’t recognize any of the patrons. I still haven’t seen my father again. Nor have I seen Eddy. It’s only been twenty-two weeks or so, though. And the other morning I thought there was string cheese in the refrigerator, and then there it was, actually there. Maybe it’s wrong of me, but I do hope that nobody buys this building for a long time. I have the sense that ghosts like to return to the same places. I, anyhow, like to do that. And there is something about the bones of this place; it really is easier to dream here.

DEAN OF THE ARTS

I owe to the convergence of boredom and an atavistic attraction to the color gold the discovery on a near-empty shelf in my childhood home (and in my childhood) of
The Collected Correspondence of Manuel Macheko
. The only other books in the house offered health or income tax advice. But Macheko wrote to Menachem Begin, explaining that Begin’s last name was confusing; to Barbara Bush, offering a broccoli recipe (with cumin seeds) that might persuade her husband to take “a new view of the humble crucifer”; to hair dye companies, seeking free samples of dyes they might recommend to men. His book had over me the kind of power more often attributed to a Vermeer: a room with a map on the wall, a letter just arrived, a ship on the sea visible through the window, and the window letting in light from a wondrous and unboundable world that would one day make its way to you, surely as the Annunciation. That was the feeling I got anyway. Back then. I didn’t understand the letters as attempts, at least in part, at comedy. A surprising number of the pursued correspondents replied, sometimes tersely, sometimes expansively, and their responses were included in the book, alongside Macheko’s original letters. In fact, the book was dedicated “To those who took the time to respond.” Sometimes Macheko’s sentiments were “appreciated” or “had received due consideration.” But sometimes more. A former Indian prime minister had taken the time to handwrite an extensive note confirming that he did drink his own urine every day as part of his health regimen, which also included celibacy, and celery. Joan Rivers stated that she had not had a face-lift, just two and a half hours of ingenious hair and makeup. Helen Gurley Brown advised Manuel to just ask his girlfriend straight out if she had herpes.

I don’t know how many copies of the self-published book existed, or exist. I believe Macheko distributed them himself. When I got older, I came to think of that book, for reasons I can (sort of) explain, as a cry for help. That said, not long ago I was looking at a handbook of facial expressions designed to teach autistic youth how to read emotion; it consisted of captioned photos of happy faces, of angry faces, of worried faces, etc; I couldn’t really “read” the supposedly easy-for-normal-people-to-“read” faces; I mean, I could, but also I couldn’t; I could tell what emotions I was
supposed
to see, sure, but to my heart, they all read the same, they all looked like cries for help.

*   *   *

Despite looking it up repeatedly, I seem never able to recall the name of the preacher of the sinners-in-the-hands-of-an-angry-God sermon, and I am similarly chronically unable to recall the real name of the pseudonymous Mr. Macheko. I retain only that he was a Persian—his term—professor living in Norman, Oklahoma (where I lived), and that when I came across his book, he had already been, or shortly thereafter was, fired from his position as a professor under circumstances that were, I was given to understand from my own father, a colleague of his, in some way unjust or superstitious or not unrelated to the author’s having especially dark skin and a warbling accent and a mysterious religion in an almost entirely white—and oddly preppy—department of a university in one of the most politically conservative university towns in the country. I had once heard rumors, similar to those about the high school French teacher, that Macheko attended a weekly cross-dressing night at a bar in Oklahoma City. I think I instinctively understood, of both men, that the rumors were a version of slander that a patina of time and geographical shifting would reveal as a readiness for veneration, or fear, but not truth. But of the firing: presumably, Macheko was also straightforwardly irritating. That can cause anyone problems.

I mention this irritatingness in order to give the benefit of doubt, at least kind of, to the midwesterners I grew up among, who took me—also an odd-looking foreigner—into their homes, and who taught me more about openness and social justice than anyone since, and about whom no one around me these days is, I think, fair. And I presume this—that Macheko was irritating—because his son was one year ahead of me in high school and he played trumpet. He was very, very talkative. He had bad acne, a big nose, glasses, lots of energy, and a cheerfulness whose border none of us had encountered. The social shame heaped unjustly and unsurprisingly on young Macheko for reasons of genetics and origin and whatnot—he took that and steam-engined it into just more gregariousness and academic distinction. Even: our art teacher gave up Friday lessons to “Bible Jeopardy,” and though it was not Macheko’s sacred text—I think he was Zoroastrian—his team almost infallibly won. Lots of kids disliked young Macheko, and even more mocked him. Some went so far as to throw stones at him. Yet his exuberance only intensified. He had good things to say about everyone.