My Life as a Man (18 page)

So: hopeless at my work and miserable in my marriage, with all the solid achievements of my early twenties gone up in smoke, I walked off the stage, too stupefied even for shame, and headed like a sleepwalker for the subway station. Fortunately there was a train already there receiving passengers; it received me—rather than riding over me—and within the hour I was deposited at the Columbia campus stop only a few blocks from my brother Morris
’
s apartment.

My nephew Abner, surprised and pleased to see me in New York, offered me a bottle of soda and half of his salami sandwich.
“
I
’
ve got a cold,
”
he explained, when I asked in a breaking voice what he was doing home from school. He showed me that he was reading
Invisible Man
with his lunch.
“
Do you really know Ralph Ellison, Uncle Peppy?
”
“
I met him once,
”
I said, and then I was bawling, or barking; tears streamed from my eyes, but the noises that I made were novel even to me.
“
Hey, Uncle Pep, what
’
s the matter?
”
“
Get your father.
”
“
He
’
s teaching.
”
“
Get him, Abbie.
”
So
the
boy called the university
—“
This is an emergency; his brother is very sick!
”
—and Morris was out of class and home in minutes. I was in the
bathroom by this time; Moe
pushed right on in, and then, big two-hundred pounder though he is, kneeled down in that tiny tiled room beside the toilet, where I was sitting on the seat, watery feces running from me, sweating and simultaneously trembling as though I were packed in ice; every few minutes my head rolled to the side and I retched in
the
direction of the sink. Still, Morris pressed his bulk against my legs and held my two limp hands in his; with a rough, rubbery cheek he wiped the perspiration from my brow.
“
Peppy, ah, Peppy,
”
he groaned, calling me by my childhood nickname and kissing my face.
“
Hang on, Pep, I
’
m here now.
”

A word about my brother and sister, very different creatures from myself.

I am the youngest of three, always
“
the baby
”
in everyone
’
s eyes, right down to today. Joan, the middle child, is five years my senior and has lived most of her adult life in California with her husband Alvin, a land developer, and their four handsome children. Says Morris of our sister:
“
You would think she
’
d been born in a Boeing jet instead of over the store in the Bronx.
”
Alvin Rosen, my brother-in-law, is six foot two and intimidatingly handsome, particularly now that his thick curls have turned silvery (
“
My father thinks he
dyes
it that color,
”
Abner once told me in disgust) and his face has begun to crease like a cowboy
’
s; from all the evidence he seems pretty much at one with his life as Califo
rn
ian, yachtsman, skier, and real estate tycoon, and utterly content with his wife and his children. He and my trim stylish sister travel each year to places slightly off the main tourist route (or just on
the
brink of being
“
discovered
”
); only recen
tly
my parents received postcards from their granddaughter, Melissa Rosen, Joannie
’
s ten-year-old, postmarked Africa (a photo safari with the family) and Brazil (a small boat had carried friends and family on a week-long journey up the Amazon, a famous Stanford naturalist serving as their guide). They throw open their house for an annual benefit costume party each year in behalf of
Bridges,
the West Coast literary magazine whose masthead lists Joan as one of a dozen advisory editors—
frequently
they are called upon to bail the magazine out of financial trouble with a timely donation from the Joan and Alvin Rosen Foundation; they are also generous contributors to hospitals and libraries in the Bay Area and among the leading sponsors of an annual fund drive for California
’
s migrant workers (
“
Capitalists,
”
says Morris,
“
in search of a conscienc
e. Aristocrats in overalls. Fra
gonard should paint
‘
em.
”
); and they are good parents, if the buoyancy and beauty of their children are any indication. To dismiss them (as Morris tends to) as vapid and frivolous would be easier if their pursuit of comfort, luxury, beauty, and glamor (they number a politically active movie star among their intimates) weren
’
t conducted with such openness and zest, with a sense that they had discovered
the
reason for being. My sister, after all, was not always so fun loving and attractive or adept at enjoying life. In 1945, as valedictorian of Yonkers High, she was a hairy, hawk-nosed, undernourished-looking little
“
grind
”
whose braininess and sallow homeliness had made her just about the least popular girl in her class; the consensus then was that she would be lucky to find a husband, let alone the rich, lanky, Lincolnesque Wharton School graduate, Alvin Rosen, whom she carried away from the University of Pennsylvania along with her A.B. in English. But she did it—not without concentrated effort, to be sure. Electrolysis on the upper lip and along the jawbone, plastic surgery on the nose and chin, and the various powders and paints available at the drugstore have transformed her into a sleek, sensual type, still Semitic, but rather more the daughter of a shah than a shopkeeper. Driving around San Francisco in her Morgan, disguised as a rider off the pampas one day and a Bulgarian peasant the next, has gained her in her middle years something more than mere popularity—according to the society page of the San Francisco paper (also sent on to my mother by little Melissa) Joan is
“
the most daring and creative tastemaker
”
alive out there. The photograph of her, with Alvin in velvet on one bare arm and the conductor of the San Francisco Symphony on the other (captioned, by Melissa,
“
Mom
at a party
”
), is simply staggering to one who remembers still that eight-by-ten glossy of the
‘
45 senior prom crowd at Billy Rose
’
s Diamond Horseshoe in New York—there sits Joan, all nose and shoulder blades, adrift in a taffeta
“
strapless
”
into which it appears she will momentarily sink out of sight, her head of coarse dark hair (since straightened and shined so that she glows like Black Beauty) mockingly framed by the Amazonian gams of the chorus girl up on the stage behind her; as I remember it, sitting beside her, at their
“
ringside
”
table, was her date, the butcher
’
s large shy son, bemusedly looking down into a glass with a Tom Collins in it
…
And this woman today is the gregarious glamor girl of America
’
s most glamorous city. To me it is awesome: that she should be on such good terms with pleasure, such a success at satisfaction, should derive so much strength and confidence from how she looks, and where she travels, and what she eats and with whom
…
well, that is no small thing, or so it seems to her brother from the confines of his hermit
’
s cell.

Joan has recen
tly
written inviting me to leave Quahsay and come out to California to stay with her and her family for as long as I like.
“
We won
’
t even bother you with our goatish ways, if you should just want to sit around the pool polishing your halo. If it pleases you, we will do everything we can to prevent you from having even a
fairly
good time. But reliable sources in the East tell me that you are still very gifted at that yourself. My dearest Alyosha, between 1939
, when I taught you to spell an
tidisestablishmentarianism,
’
and now, you
’
ve changed. Or perhaps not—maybe what sent you into ecstasy over that word was how difficult it was. Truly, Pep, if your appetite for the disagreeable should ever slacken, I am here and so is the house. Your fallen sister, J.
”

For the record, my reply:

Dear Joan:
What
’
s disagreeable isn
’
t being where I am or living as I do right now. This is the best place for me, probably for some time to come. I can
’
t stay on indefinitely of course, but there are
approximations to this sort of life. When Maureen and I lived in New Milford, and I had that twelve-by-twelve shack in the woods behind the house—and a bolt to throw on the door—I could be content for hours on end. I haven
’
t changed much since 1939: I still like more than anything to sit alone in a room spelling things out as best I can with a pencil and paper. When I first got to New York in
‘
62, and my personal life was a shambles, I used to dream out loud in my analyst
’
s office about becoming again that confident and triumphant college ldd I was at twenty; now I find the idea of going back beyond that even more appealing. Up here I sometimes imagine that I am ten—and treat myself accordingly. To start the day I eat a bowl of hot cereal in the dining room as I did each morning in our kitchen at home; then I head out here to my cabin, at just about the time I used to go off to school. I
’
m at work by eight forty-five, when
“
the first bell
”
used to ring. Instead of arithmetic, social studies, etc., I write on the typewriter till noon. (Just like my boyhood idol, Ernie Pyle; actually I may have grown up to become the war correspondent I dreamed of being in 1943 —except that the front-line battles I report on aren
’
t the kind I
’
d had in mind.) Lunch out of a lunch pail provided by the dining hall here: a sandwich, some carrot sticks, an oatmeal cookie, an apple, a thermos of milk. More than enough for this growing boy. After lunch I resume writing until three thirty, when
“
the last bell
”
used to ring at school. I straighten up my desk and carry my empty lunch pail back to the dining hall, where the evening
’
s soup is cooli
ng. The smell of dill, mother
’
s perfume. Manchester is three miles from the Colony by way of a country road that curves down through the hills. There is a women
’
s junior college at the edge of town, and the girls are down there by the time I arrive. I see them inside the laundromat and at the post office and buying shampoo in the pharmacy—reminding me of the playground
“
after school,
”
aswarm with long-haired little girls a ten-year-old boy could only admire from afar and with wonder. I admire them from afar and with wonder in the local luncheonette, where I go for a cup of coffee. I have been asked by one of the English professors at the college to speak to his writing class. I declined. I don
’
t want them any more accessible than they would be if I were back in the fifth grade. After my coffee I walk down the street to the town
library and sit for a while leafing through the magazines and watching the schoolkids at the long tables copying their book reports off the jacket flaps. Then I go out and hitch a ride back up to the Colony; I couldn
’
t feel any more trusting and innocent than when I hop out of the car and say to the driver,
“
Thanks for the ride—s
’
long!
”

I sleep in a room on the second floor of the big three-story farmhouse that houses the guests; on the main floor are the kitchen, dining hall, and the living room (magazines, record player, and piano); there
’
s a ping-pong table on a side porch, and that
’
s just about it. On the floor of my room, in my undershorts, I do half an hour of calisthenics at the end of each afternoon. In the last six months, through dint of exercise and very little appetite, I have become just about as skinny as I was when you used to pretend to play the xylophone on my ribs. After
“
gym
”
I shave and shower. My windows are brushed by the needles of an enormous spruce; that
’
s the only sound I hear while shaving, outside of the water running into the sink. Not a noise I can
’
t account for. I try each evening to give myself a
“
perfect
”
shave, as a shaving ten-year-old might. I
concentrate:
hot water, soap, hot water, coat of Rise, with the grain, coat of Rise, against the grain, hot water, cold water, thorough investigation of all surfaces
…
perfect. The vodka martini that I mix for myself at six, I sip alone while listening to the news on my portable radio. (I am on my bed in my bathrobe: face ivory smooth, underarms deodorized, feet powdered, hair combed—clean as a bridegroom in a marriage manual.) The martini was of course not my habit at ten, but something like Dad
’
s when he came home with his headache (and the day
’
s receipts) from the store: looking as though he were drinking turpentine, he would toss down his shot of Schenley
’
s, and then listen in
“
his
”
chair to
“
Lyle Van and the News.
”
Dinner is eaten at six thirty here, in the company of the fifteen or so guests in residence at the moment, mostly novelists and poets, a few painters, one composer. Conversation is pleasant, or annoying, or dull; in all, no more or less taxing than eating night after night with one
’
s family, though the family that comes to mind isn
’
t ours so much as the one Chekhov assembled in
Uncle Vanya. A
young poetess recently arrived here mired in ast
rology; whenever she gets going
on somebody
’
s horoscope I want to jump up from the table and get a pistol and blow her brains out. But as we are none of us bound by blood, law, or desire (as far as I can tell), forbearance generally holds sway. We drift after dinner into the living room, to chat and scratch the resident dog; the composer plays Chopin nocturnes; the
Neiv York Times
passes from hand to hand
…
generally within the hour we have all drifted off without a word. My understanding is that with only five exceptions, all those in residence right now happen to be in flight, or in hiding, or in recovery—from bad marriages, divorces, and affairs. I have overheard tag ends of conversation issuing from the phone booth down in the kitchen to support this rumor. Two teacher-poets in their thirties who have just been through the process of divesting themselves of wives and children and worldly goods (in exchange for student admirers) have struck up a friendship and compare poems they
’
re writing about the ordeal of giving up little sons and daughters. On the weekends when their dazzling student girl friends come to visit, they disappear into the bedsheets at the local motel for forty-eight hours at a clip. I recently began to play ping-pong again for the first time in twenty years, two or three fierce games after dinner with an Idaho woman, a stocky painter in her fifties who has been married five times; one night last week (only ten days after her arrival) she drank everything she could find on the premises, including the vanilla extract in the cook
’
s pantry, and had to be taken away the next morning in a station wagon by the mortician who runs the local AA. We all left our typewriters to stand glumly out on the steps and wave goodbye.
“
Ah, don
’
t worry,
”
she called to us out the car window,
“
if it wasn
’
t for my mistakes I
’
d still be back on the front porch in Boise.
”
She was our only
“
character
”
and far and away the most robust and spirited of the survivors hereabouts. One night six of us went down into Manchester for a beer and she told us about her first two marriages. After she finished, the astrologist wanted to know her sign: the rest of us were trying to figure out how come she wasn
’
t dead.
“
Why the hell do you keep getting married, Mary?
”
I asked her. She chucked me on the chin and said,
“
Because I don
’
t want to
the
shriveled up.
”
But she
’
s gone now (probably to marry the mortician), a
nd except for the muffled cries
rising from the phone booth at night, it
’
s as quiet here as a hospital zone. Perfect for homework. After dinner and the
Times,
I walk back out to my studio, one of twenty cabins scattered along a dirt road that winds through the two hundred acres of open fields and evergreen woods. In the cabin there
’
s a writing desk, a cot, a Franklin stove, a couple of straight-backed chairs painted yellow, a bookcase painted white, and the wobbly wicker table where I eat lunch at noon. I read over what I
’
ve written that day. Trying to read anything else is useless; my mind wanders back to my own pages. I think about that or nothing.

Walking back to the main house at midnight I have only a flashlight to help me make my way along the path that runs between the trees. Under a black sky by myself, I am no more courageous at thirty-four than I was as a boy: there is the urge to run. But as a matter of fact invariably I will turn the flashlight off and stand out there in the midnight woods, until either fear subsides or I have achieved something like a Mexican standoff between me and it. What frightens me? At ten it was only oblivion. I used to pass the
“
haunted
”
Victorian houses on Hawthorne Avenue on my way home from Cub Scout meetings, reminding myself,
There are no ghosts, the dead are dead,
which was, of course, the most terrifying thought of all. Today it
’
s the thought that the dead
aren
’
t
that turns my knees to water. I think: the funeral was another trick—she
’
s alive! Somehow or other, she will reappear! Down in town in the late afternoon, I half expect to look into the laundromat and see her stuffing a machine with a bag of wash. At the luncheonette where I go for my cup of coffee, I sometimes sit at the counter waiting for Maureen to come charging through the door, with finger pointed
—“
What are you doing in here! You said you
’
d meet me by the bank at four!
”
“
By the bank? Four? You?
”
And we
’
re at it.
‘
You
’
re dead,
”
I tell her,
“
you cannot meet anyone by any bank if you are,
as you are,
dead!
”
But still, you will have observed, I keep my distance from the pretty young students buying shampoo to wash their long hair. Who ever accused a shy ten-year-old of being
“
a well-known seducer of college girls
”
? Or, for that matter, heard of a plaintiff who was ashes?
“
She
’
s dead,
”
I remind myself,
“
and it is over.
”
But how can that be? Defies credulity. If in a work of reali
stic fiction the hero was saved
by something as fortuitous as the sudden death of his worst enemy, what intelligent reader would suspend his disbelief? Facile, he would grumble, and fantastic. Fictional wish fulfillment, fiction in the service of one
’
s dreams. Not True to Life. And I would agree. Maureen
’
s death is not True to Life. Such things simply do not happen, except when they do. (And as time passes and I get older, I find that they do with increasing frequency.)

I
’
m sending along Xerox copies of two stories I
’
ve written up here, both more or less on the Subject. They
’
ll give you an idea as to why I
’
m here and what I
’
m doing. So far no one has read the stories but my editor. He had encouraging things to say about both of them, but of course what he would like to see is that novel for which my publisher advanced twenty thousand dollars back when I was a boy wonder. I know how much he would like to see it because he so scrupulously and kindly avoided mentioning it. He gave the game away, however, by inquiring whether
“
Courting Disaster
”
(one of the two stories enclosed) was going
“
to develop into a longer work about a guilt-ridden Zuckerman and his beautiful stepdaughter in Italy—a kind of post-Freudian meditation on themes out of
Anna Karenina
and
Death in Venice.
Is that what you
’
re up to, or are you planning to continue to write Zuckerman variations until you have constructed a kind of full-length fictional fugue?
”
Good ideas all right, but what I am doing, I had to tell the man standing there holding my IOU, is more like trying to punch my way out of a paper bag.
“
Courting Disaster
”
is a post-cataclysmic fictional meditation on nothing more than my marriage: what if Maureen
’
s personal mythology had been biographical truth? Suppose that, and suppose a good deal more—and you get
“
CD.
”
From a Spielvogelian perspective, it may even be read as a legend composed at the behest and under the influence of the superego, my adventures as seen through its eyes—as
“
Salad Days
”
is something like a comic idyll honoring a Pannish (and as yet unpunished) id. It remains for the ego to come forward then and present
its
defense, for all parties to the conspiracy-to-abscond-with-my-life to have had their day in court. I realize now, as I entertain this idea, that the nonaction narrative that I
’
m currently working on might be considered just that: the
“
I
”
owning up to its role as ring
leader of the plot. If so, then
after all testimony has been heard and a guilty verdict swiftly rendered, the conspirators will be consigned to the appropriate correctional institution. You suggest your pool. Warden Spielvogel, my former analyst (whose job, you see, I am now doing on the side), would suggest that the band of desperados be handed back over to him for treatment in the cell block at Eighty-ninth and Park. The injured plaintiff in this action does not really care where it happens, or how, so long as the convicted learn their lesson and NEVER DO IT AGAIN. Which isn
’
t likely: we
are
dealing with a treacherous bunch here, and that this trio has been entrusted with my well-being is a source of continuous and grave concern. Having been around the track with them once already, I would as soon consign my fate to the Marx Brothers or the Three Stooges; buffoons, but they at least
like
one another. P.S. Don
’
t take personally the brother of
“
Salad Days
”
or the sister of
“
Courting Disaster.
”
Imaginary siblings serving the design of the fiction. If I ever felt superior to you and your way of life, I don
’
t any longer. Besides, it
’
s to you that I may owe my literary career. Trying on a recent afternoon walk to figure out how I got into this line of work, I remembered myself at age six and you at age eleven, waiting in the back seat of the car for Mother and Dad to finish their Saturday night shopping. You kept using a word that struck me as the funniest thing I
’
d ever heard, and once you saw how much it tickled me, you wouldn
’
t stop, though I begged you to from the floor of the car where I was curled up in a knot from pure hilarity. I believe the word was
“
noodle,
”
used as a synonym for
“
head.
”
You were merciless, somehow you managed to stick it somewhere into every sentence you uttered, and eventually I wet my pants. When Mother and Dad returned to the car I was outraged with you and in tears.
“
Joannie did it,
”
I cried, whereupon Dad informed me that it was a human impossibility for one person to pee in another person
’
s pants. Little he knew about the power of art.