Bigfoot Dreams (25 page)

“Lowell,” she says. “Are you okay?”

“Completely nuts,” he says. “My head’s about to split like an overripe papaya.”

“Nuts about what?” she says.

“Same old shit,” he says. “The usual S.O.S.”

Vera braces herself for whatever’s coming next. Meanwhile this timely reminder: It wasn’t all kisses, one harmonious moment after another. Soon after they got together, Lowell told her how a former girlfriend once accused him of making love as if he were in a Tijuana whorehouse with a taxi running its meter outside. God knows why he confessed this—perhaps to reassure her that sex with his old girlfriend was nothing special, perhaps for the reassurance that she so freely gave. How could anyone say such a thing! Nothing could be further from the truth! And then one night, just before Lowell left, right in the midst of some Tijuana-style lovemaking, Vera laughed out loud and understood what folly it is to expose the sharp and accurate barbs old lovers leave lodged in one’s brain.

“I can’t tell what you want,” he says. “
You
don’t know what you want. What it looks to me like you want is for me to fall madly in love with you again so you can say, ‘I don’t know, Lowell, I
want
to be with you but it never seems to work out.’”

That’s
not what Vera wants. He isn’t being fair. But what of it? Fairness was never Lowell’s strong point.

“Five years of that has made pudding of my brain,” he’s saying. “Shuffling around the country along various interstates, standing in the rain with my thumb out, trying to do what’s convenient for you. And for what? You don’t even think about me. Like tonight. We’ve been yakking about you for hours—your job, fountain of youth, this and that…You never
asked
about me.”

“That’s not true!” Vera says. “I asked if you sold your screenplay.” But that’s all she ever asks. If only they could start this night over—isn’t that what she wanted with Solomon? Every time someone comes to her house, she winds up wishing they could put more film in the camera and try one more take. “Tell me now,” she says. “How are you?”

“Broke,” he says. “Flat-out broke. No money, no job, no love, no literary miracle. Living hand-to-butt as usual. The J. Paul Getty of food stamps. In hock to a mystic who’s out of his fucking tree and a crazy Mafioso who ain’t going to get published on the bathroom wall. They don’t call him Frankie the Canary for nothing. All he wants to do is sing sing sing. Frankie, I say, I’m not your father confessor, I’m a Holy Roller Baptist. Just hearing that crap should qualify me for the Federal Witness Protection Act—new name, new town, brand-new, plastic-surgery face. That might be my lucky break. I’ll get them to change my name to Howard Hughes, grow a beard and toenails three feet long, spend my golden years shuffling down hotel corridors with empty Kleenex boxes for shoes…”

“Howard Hughes is dead,” says Vera.

“Who else is rich? I don’t care. Mick Jagger? I can’t get me no—” Lowell wags his finger in the air. He’s light-years away from talking about whatever’s gone wrong between them; who knows if he’ll ever orbit back. At least he’s not still sulking on his edge of the bed. Vera always liked it that Lowell wasn’t one of those therapy heads who’d analyze all night long. Now she sees that this, too, has its disadvantages.

“Maybe we
could
break into that house. If that stuff works, it’ll sure beat writing Frankie the Canary Corsaro’s life story.”

“Forget it,” says Vera.

“All right,” Lowell says. “Just tell me the address and how to get there.” Slowly it dawns on Vera: He
means
it. She’s thinking of Mayan treasure, giant squid, realizing now what she knew at the time but was too much in love to admit—what was a game to her was to Lowell a statement of faith and of all his future hopes. She’d have to be completely nuts to link her destiny with his. Besides, there’s Rosie to consider. Admitting this makes her feel miles away from Lowell. All this time she’s mocked Lynda and El Creepo and their baroque and rancorous arrangements. Why did she think hers was better?

“Is that why you came?” she asks. “To go into the snake-oil biz?”

“No, sweet pea,” he says. “I
told
you. I came here to help you. And to see Rosie.”

“Then if you want to help me, stay away from there. All we need is for you to get busted breaking into the Greens. They’d trace you back to me in two seconds flat.”

“Never,” says Lowell. “They’d never get it out of me. Name, rank, and serial number. That’s it. Peter Pan Starkweather, oooo. Private Starkweather reporting for duty, Sir.”

“Big Youth,” says Vera.

“That’s me,” Lowell says, and sighs deeply. “Big Youth’s had a hard day. Maybe we should rack up some z’s.” He rolls over once, and by the time Vera’s found a comfortable way to nestle into his back, he’s breathing evenly. Revising history for what she promises herself will be the last time tonight, Vera decides that
this
is what ruined things between them: his talent for dropping off any time, anywhere. This, too, she used to love. She remembers curling beside him on the floor of a Mexican train so crowded they couldn’t find a seat, Lowell snoring peacefully while a chicken stepped back and forth over his face. Eventually it began to irk her, especially when he’d nod off in the midst of an argument with nothing settled. Lying beside him, listening to his regular breathing, she thinks:
SLEEPLESS SPOUSE SHOOTS SLUMBERING SIDEKICK
. Sidekick? Maybe that’s what Vera needs. She’s never felt so alone.

B
Y MORNING VERA FEELS
better. Sunlight’s streaming in; there’s coffee to be made. Her head’s found a comfortable place on Lowell’s chest, and they’re both faking sleep. Even this seems a luxury; when you’re by yourself, there’s no point pretending.

Nor is there much now. Vera knows she’ll get up, and why not? What’s to lose? No wintry cold floors, and it’s long past that dreary predawn hour when Rosie used to patter in, demanding breakfast or a bottle. Some days Vera couldn’t wait to see her, would jump out of bed. Some days she’d dig in, muttering at Lowell, knowing that one drop of spilled syrup, one petrified, stuck-on Cheerio would drive her into the street to scream her message of thankless overwork and the suffering of the innocent to the subway, the city, the world.

Would things have been different if someone had promised Vera that one day she’d lie here deciding to let Rosie sleep, skip summer program, spend the day with Lowell? Had told her that the morning after Lowell’s return would be one of those mornings when
he
couldn’t wait to see Rosie? She’d never have believed it, nor can she quite believe it now as she peers over the covers to see Lowell zipping his jeans.

He’s almost out the bedroom door when he turns back and kisses her. Vera rolls over into the warm spot he’s left. She needs all the warmth she can get as she hears them in the kitchen, hears Rosie saying more in five minutes than she has in the last two years.

Crafts counsellors, gym teachers, Carl, Elijah, names Vera doesn’t recognize—Rosie’s life has a cast out of Cecil B. DeMille. Her world will always be wider than all Vera’s eavesdropping can encompass. Vera’s trying not to mind that Rosie’s saved her summer up in interesting bits to tell Lowell. Vera used to do that, too. She knows things would change if Lowell lived with them. Then Rosie’s view of him would broaden to include all the smaller human emotions: vexation, impatience. She might even stop talking to him for a while and start talking to Vera. Imagining this is almost as hard as imagining life with a baby when you’re pregnant, as looking at your infant daughter and picturing her at ten.

Vera heads straight for the coffeepot and pours herself a cup. Mimes it, that is. The pot’s empty. It’s not that Lowell doesn’t love his morning coffee, nor is it laziness, exactly. He simply forgets. “Good morning, sweetheart,” he says, so casually you’d think he’d been saying it every morning for ten years. Another difference between them: Not only can Lowell imagine
anything
, he can convince himself it’s true.

Vera watches the teakettle. Lowell and Rosie watch Vera. At the kettle’s first tentative whistle, Lowell says, “Rosie, hon, remember. A watched pot
does
boil. It just takes twice as long.”

“I like things to take a long time,” says Vera. “At least when the meter’s not running.”

“Well, now,” says Lowell.

“What are you guys talking about?” says Rosie.

Pouring water through the filter, Vera has another one of those low-altitude, out-of-the-body flights. This time she sees her own shoulders, their martyred, weighed-down curve, the slope of St. Sebastian’s shoulders, of Norma’s when she’d stand at the stove wolfing down coffee when Dave was between jobs and could dawdle over breakfast with Vera. McCarthy isn’t enough, he used to say. I’m on your mother’s blacklist, too. Woman at the stove, man and child at the table, the same configuration—where’s the dialectic now? Maybe history isn’t a spiral but one closed circle after another. Vera used to believe her marriage was better—looser and more imaginative, if nothing else—than Norma and Dave’s. Now she’s not sure. She thinks this is unnatural, a sign of something awry. In the proper order of things, each generation sees its love life as a giant improvement over that of its parents.

“I’m going to be late,” says Vera.

“Late for what?” says Lowell. “The whole plant’s on hold till you get there. Stockpiling the confetti and balloons for National Vera Day. Champagne and coke on the house. You went over the top, darlin’. Saved the whole platoon.”

“Champagne and coke?” Rosie wrinkles her nose as if it’s a mixed drink.

“Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it,” says Lowell.

What is he telling her? Maybe Rosie
should
go to summer program. Has Vera said this aloud? Because what Rosie says is, “Do I
have
to? It’s not like we do anything. Volleyball tournaments, jewelry boxes out of popsicle sticks. Everyone knows they’re just giving us lame stuff to keep busy so we don’t smoke dope and break windows and shoplift from Tape and Record City. Plus I
never
get to see Dad…”

“Sure,” says Lowell. “Maybe we’ll take in the Museum of Natural History. Check out the giant squid.” Lowell waves his arms and bulges his eyes. Vera can’t argue with that.

“Yay!” says Rosie. “There’s a Muppet show at the planetarium.”

Wait a minute. Not only has Rosie seen it, she was calling it garbage Friday night at Dave and Norma’s. Vera looks at Rosie, then looks away, afraid of glimpsing some troubling reflection of her own face faking interest so some boy would think her agreeable. Though maybe it’s not that; maybe Rosie’s pretending to be younger,
Sesame Street
age, so Lowell won’t feel so bad about all those years of growing up he’s missed.

Lowell stretches as if he’s just now waking up and says, “Goddamn if this place isn’t cozy. Ladies, take notice: I’m cashing it in. These thin old bones are just too brittle to be grinding night after nightmare-wracked night on C.D.’s cold cement floor.” Vera wonders if he still plays the guitar and sings songs with titles like “All My Goodtime Friends Are Gone” and “Trials, Troubles, and Tribulations.” He used to make fun of this cornpone self-pity. Now it’s no joke. He
is
too old to be camping out in some retro hippie leatherworker’s studio.

“I’ll bring you home a lottery ticket,” says Vera.

“I’d appreciate that,” says Lowell.

H
ERE’S WHAT KIND OF
day it is: Vera can’t find a seat. Blinking dazedly at her fellow passengers, she feels foolish, exposed, as if she’s stumbled in on a surprise party they’re giving in her honor. But no one’s welcoming or even sympathetic. She’s the only one standing, and they seem to think she deserves it. Once more Vera imagines a party, this one full of monstrous, bratty children who’ve just trounced her at musical chairs.

Who are these trespassers? Foreign tourists or out-of-town Baptists who’d assumed the front car was safe and now by their presence have made it so? No such exotica, not today. Just your garden-variety Gotham working stiffs, perhaps a shade more pleased for having gotten a seat at rush hour. Surely there’s some simple explanation: a few brave souls at Brighton Beach made others along the line take heart. It’s how Dave’s always explained the revolution: first one person gets the nerve, then another. Come the revolution, the whole subway will be safe, each car with its equal share of passengers. But what will happen to the screamers? Will they adjust their schedules to travel only outside of normal working hours? Contemplating this, Vera feels like a poet facing exile, the loss of her homeland, her muse.

Already adrift, she takes the wrong exit onto Herald Square and surfaces in front of the New Napoli. What a surprise. If she’s the pointer on some immense, invisible Ouija board, what’s tapping it now is the heavy hand of her not-very-subtle unconscious. It’s obvious what she’s after. After a night and a morning with Lowell, she wants one of Vinnie’s smiles more than the Pulitzer Prize.

At nine
A.M.
, the New Napoli’s a different place. A sparse and desultory late-breakfast crowd hunches over the counter, mopping up eggs with the gloomy preoccupation of barflies at last call. Vinnie’s halfway back, shoving bacon around the grill as if he’s mad at it. Away from his window, his floury circles of dough, he’s practically unrecognizable. Vera’s out of context, too. Vinnie’s nod has a certain lingering unease, as if she’s someone he’s having trouble placing.

“Coffee to go and a cruller,” she says.

“In early today?” says Vinnie. Is she imagining it, or is he eyeing her strangely? Perhaps he’s surprised that her life extends beyond lunchtime. Though she knows she’s overreacting, she can’t help thinking he’s staring at her as if he’d sighted Dracula flying around at high noon.

Vera’s so happy to find Hazel back at her post, she nearly kisses her. How pitiful to be so hungry for some sign of continuity, you’ll jump at the person who despises you most. Vera feels like a prerevolutionary Russian muzhik kneeling to kiss the hand that’s snapped the whip all these years. Oh, it’s the least she can do. How much more has been promised and forgotten. Was it yesterday that Vera took an oath: If Hazel returned, she’d apologize for writing about that rogue elevator’s fatal flight? But how to begin? All the way up, Vera rehearses, tries opening gambits, starts to speak, thinks better of it, starts again. They’re nearly to Vera’s floor when Hazel looks at her and grunts. “Hunh,” she says. “You look like one of them dogs.”