Drowning Lessons (14 page)

You couldn't argue with Gloria. She'd accuse me of having a poet's soul, and if that didn't work she'd hurl some technical phrase out of a clinical psychology textbook at you and shrug her shoulders, like you'd never get it. It used to piss me off. And yet we kept at it every time we ran into each other. The more heatedly we argued, the more we wanted to sleep together. The only thing stopping us was Stephen O'Shan.

Stephen was a little, balding, red-headed Irishman who suffered from an array of mysterious, incurable bone ailments and liked to read
Ulysses
out loud. “Dublin English,” he remarked more than once, “is the finest English in the world.” Stephen was from Dublin.

“How is Stephen?” I asked Gloria. “Have you seen him?”

“Stephen is fine,” said Gloria, looking down at me lying in the grass. The nostrils of her Roman nose looked especially long and dark from below. “Only he's not Stephen anymore.”

“No?” I said. “Then who is he?”

“His name is Colin David McDoogle. He's changed it. Legally.”

I remembered him telling me that he wanted to do that. I never understood why. “What was wrong with his name?”

“You'll have to ask Colin. I have my theories.”

Stephen O'Shan reminded me of a leprechaun. That's a trite thing to say about an Irish person, but in this case it happens to be true. He had that twinkle in his eyes and the walk of someone tiptoeing through a field of very small mushrooms. I'm not up on Irish mythology: I've no idea if there's such a thing as an
unlucky
leprechaun. But if there is, Stephen O'Shan was one. I remember our first meeting. At the annual university poetry jam. Stephen was among the first readers. He did this funny thing about the word “fuck,” celebrating its versatility, showing how, for instance, it could be used as a verb (“quit trying
to fuck
with me”), an adjective (“look at that
fucking
idiot!”), a noun (“get away from me, you
fuck
”), an adverb (“that is
fucking
amazing!”), and so on. Me, I read from one of my notebooks. I already had at least fifty of them. I read, “I wasted half my life trying to be Marlon Brando.” A voice at the back of the audience shouted, “Don't feel bad! Just think how much time Marlon Brando has wasted!” The voice was Stephen O'Shan's.

In the hallway afterward I went up to him. I told him that I'd really enjoyed his “fuck” piece. “Thanks,” he said. He held a handful of pills, different colors and shapes. He tossed them into his mouth, flung his head back, and swallowed. “Health issues,” he said. He pointed to the notebook under my arm. “Fascinating stuff,” he said, in a choked voice (a pill had lodged in his throat).

“You liked it?”

“I did; I did indeed. How many notebooks did you say?”

“About fifty. I've lost count.”

“Fascinating.”

The next time I saw him was just before Christmas break. He wore a down fisherman's vest with many pockets and a dark green kilt. I called to him across the green. “Stephen!” He looked up at me and smiled a forced smile. He looked bad. He had deep, dark wedges under his watery blue eyes and the beginnings of a not very impressive mustache. He looked confused, distraught. I asked him where he was going. “I dunno,” he said. I invited him to my parents' home, where I was living. We got into my sports
car. The kilt gave off a smell of cloves. “Spice wine,” he said. He'd been out drinking the night before.

My room was in the basement. It smelled of mold and washingmachine lint. Two cheap bookcases made of particleboard sagged under the weight of past notebooks.

“Fascinating,” said Stephen, picking one notebook off the shelf, riffling through it. “May I make a suggestion?”

“Please.”

He swallowed a pill. “Why don't you throw them all in a lake?”

“Pardon me?”

“Your notebooks. Why don't you throw them in a lake?”

“A lake?” I said.

“Yes: a lake.”

He said it with that twinkle in his eyes. Stephen was one of those people who could smile without smiling, thanks to that twinkle. His lips were pale and dry. His forehead skin had a greenish, coppery tinge to it. You can't blame me for suspecting that he was a leprechaun.

He asked about the pile of paper next to my typewriter, and I told him I was working on a novel. “Really?” he said. “What's it about?” I told him. “Fascinating,” he said. Then: “Might I give you another piece of advice?” I didn't say anything. “You must do away with the melodramatics of the past. Give your hero a middle-class background. Where does he work? What does he do? Get some dirt and grease on his hands, under his fingernails. I want to see those dirty fingernails. Show me the town where he lives, the already-tired faces lined up at the greasy-spoon counter, eating their breakfast.” Detail by detail, chapter by chapter, Stephen went over every aspect of my novel, which I had not
written and he had not read. “Yes, yes — exactly!” he would interject every now and then, responding to some idea of his. Or: “No, no, that won't do; that won't do at all.” He insisted that I write down everything in my notebook. In two hours I had thirty pages of notes. “Ah, the irony of it,” he said. “If I could only do the same for my novel.”

“You're writing a novel?”

“Aye,” he said. “Trying. I sit myself in front of the machine and draw a blank. Nothing. Nada. Funny, isn't it?”

He swallowed another pill.

“What are the pills for?” I asked.

“Pain.”

Two weeks passed before I saw him again.

“Bastard,” he said, and walked right past me.

“Stephen? What's up?”

“Bloody bastard. Dirty fucker. Son of a bitch.” There was no stardust in his eyes.

“Where are you going?”

“I'm late for class,” he said. “Fucker.”

He kept walking. I tagged along.

“What's the matter? Why are you mad at me?”

“You were supposed to meet me last night, remember?”

“I
was
?” I had no such memory.

“We had an appointment.”

“We
did
?”

“I got robbed, thanks to you.”

“Robbed?”

“Five hundred fucking dollars. My life savings. I left it on the
bar when I went to phone you.” His pale blue eyes shined wetly. By the pitch of his voice I could tell he was loaded with painkillers or tranquilizers or whatever they were. He sounded like a tuba.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I completely forgot.”

“Ah, ya bastard.”

He walked faster.

“What the hell were you doing with five hundred dollars, anyway?”

“I just borrowed it from the bloody bank, shithead. I was using it to pay the rent on my cottage.”

“Why are you walking so fast?”

“I'm late for bloody class. Don't ask me so many bloody questions.”

“Look, Stephen, I —”

But instead of walking to his class, he walked off campus, to a nearby bar. I followed him.

“You have no idea,” he said, twisting past crowded tables, “what it's like to live in constant pain.”

He sat down at a table. A waitress came. I ordered us both soups and salad. Stephen ordered a double scotch on the rocks. I ordered a martini.

“Do you know what John Fowles says in
The French Lieutenant's Woman
?”

I said, “No, what does John Fowles say in
The French Lieutenant's Woman
?”

“In
The French Lieutenant's Woman
John Fowles says that tragedy is all very well on stage, but in real life it comes closer to perversity.”

He told me to write that in my notebook. I did.

“Do you know what I intend to do?” he said when his drink had come, the sparkle coming back into his eyes, his brogue thickening. “First off, I intend to swallow a massive overdose of these bloody pills —” He showed me the pills; they were wrapped in a napkin. “Then I'm gonna set fire to the bleeding cottage that those bloody bastards are overcharging me for anyway.” The cottage was a dozen miles from campus, on Lake Candlewood. “Then I'll walk across the frozen lake in my underwear while the damn thing burns to the ground. I'll leave nothing; not a trace. The police will walk among the remains saying, ‘What's this? Is this his typewriter? Is this his arm? Is this his dick?' There won't be nothing left, I swear. If I could figure out a way to get my car in there, I'd burn it, too. They won't even find my name. I didn't tell you, did I? I'm changing my name. From now on it's Colin. Colin David McDoogle. Colin David McDoogle …” He said it a few more times, then fell asleep with his balding red head next to his soup.

That same night, in my basement bed, I dreamed that Stephen was being interrogated by an officer of the British army. In the dream, when the officer said to Stephen, “Describe your pain to me,” Stephen said, “It's like I swallowed a fucking elephant.”

Before the school year ended, we saw each other once more. We were walking down a budding trail through the woods near the lake.

“She's got me so damned confused,” Stephen said. He still went by Stephen then.

“Who?”

“Gloria?”

He'd never mentioned her before. “Isn't she married?” I said.

“Separated,” he said. “That's what's got me so damn confused. She keeps saying she's going to get a divorce.”

“She's a psychology major,” I said. “A behaviorist.”

“She's bloody smart, is what she is. Can't resist a smart woman.”

“You like her?”

“That's an understatement. I'd say I'm in love with her.” He turned to me. “She came to my cottage, you know. All by herself.” He said this with a wink as if it were proof that she loved him, too. “She let me cook her dinner. Don't tell me she's married.” He skipped a stone into the lake, then winced from the pain. “Dammit,” he said.

“You all right?”

“Ach, when will I learn?”

He took off his shoes.

“What are you doing?”

“Taking off my clothes; what's it look like?” He stood naked, facing the water. “Coming?” he said.

“It's November.”

“You'll never be the same if you don't.”

I put my notebook down and took off my clothes. We dove simultaneously. The water was like frozen razor blades. We jumped right back out and stood shivering with our balls turning blue, penises shrunken to the size of pitted olives, giggling like five-year-olds.

“There, you see?” he said.

“It feels good,” I had to admit.

“Tell me, when did you start keeping those notebooks of yours?”

“In eighth grade. My English teacher, Mr. Fesh, suggested that we keep a journal. I never stopped.”

“I see you took his advice. What about mine?” He nodded toward the lake.

“What purpose would it serve?”

“It's like this,” said Stephen. “Once upon a time there was a very wise man. A brilliant scholar. He taught in many schools and universities and traveled around the world. He was quite well regarded. By the time he was fifty he had collected all his extensive knowledge into one great, thick notebook, and this thick notebook he carried with him at all times. And those he visited in his travels would reach out to touch the notebook, to admire it and the great man who had filled it. (He was, without question, a great and learned man.) Well. One day he was walking through a village, surrounded by admirers, when suddenly a beggar in rags ran up to him, yanked the notebook out from under his arm, and tossed it down a well. Needless to say, the famous scholar was shocked, as were all the townspeople. The beggar turned to him then and said, ‘If you want it back, I can get it for you, and it will be as clean and dry as before.' Can you guess what the great man's reply was?”

I shook my head.

“There was none. He kept walking. And then the great man went on to become a
truly
great man. What you need, if I may say so, is for someone to yank the notebook from under your arm.”

I handed him my notebook. I pointed to the lake.

He shook his head. “Nah, it's not that simple. You may find,
my good friend, that you've got to tear the pages out yourself, one by one.”

I didn't tear out any pages. I kept on filling them. I filled them all the way to Oregon and back. I filled them with pipe dreams, and when the pipe dreams failed to materialize, I filled then with regret and self-pity. I knew Claudette would dump me. I knew it the night I announced to her, in a winter field lit by stars and by the eyes of deer frozen into statues, my intention to leave. “It's something I have to do,” I said. Claudette said she understood. She said it in a voice choked with tears. Did she also understand that, three months into my absence, she would not only take up with some other guy but let him move into her apartment? Still — it wasn't her fault. I should have known better. I could have predicted it; I could have
planned
it. I might as well have begged for it.

Now here I am, back, lying under a chilly sun, looking up into Gloria's dark nostrils, past the pale hairs growing there, straight up into her behaviorist's brain. She says, “Would you like to see him?” referring to Stephen, aka Colin. “He'd love to see you; he'd be thrilled, I'm sure.”

She tells me she's living with him at his cottage, by the lake.

“It's strictly a roommate situation,” she says. “Nothing serious.”

“He's crazy about you.”

“Oh,” she says. “He's gotten over that.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. And his name is Colin. He's very sensitive about it.”

We rode in Gloria's car — an old Saab with a leaky muffler — up Route 7 to Sherman. The car rumbled and spluttered. Only psy
chologists, I thought, drive ratty Saabs. Psychologists and middle school algebra teachers. Bourgeoisphobes. On the dashboard was a postcard with an embossed sand dollar.