Rear-View Mirrors (7 page)

“What can I do for you?” The cigarette moves.

“I was wondering if you'd fill my canteen.” As if a fog is lifting in the room, I discern the shapes of two mountainous backs at the bar and a thick-necked man behind it.

“What do you want in it—whiskey or gin?”

One of the backs shakes with a chuckle, its owner turning to look me over.

“Just water, thanks.” I hand over the canteen.

“How do you like it—straight, or maybe thinned down a bit with a shot of vodka?”

Another chuckle.

“Straight will do fine.”

I expect him to ask me what brand I want, but he fills the canteen at a tiny sink and gives it back without any more jokes.

“Thanks.” I turn, reach for the door—and just before opening it, glance to my right, glimpsing a man at an old-style jukebox, flipping through the plastic pages listing the names of the songs.

***

Mozart,
Requiem.
Bach,
Saint Matthew's Passion.
Beethoven,
Mass in C.

Headlights moved across the wall. I straightened up and cocked my head. Not the sound of my father's ancient Plymouth Valiant. It passed the house and I returned to thumbing through his records.

Fauré,
Requiem.
Bach,
Cantatas 32 and 79.
Brahms,
A German Requiem.
You'd have thought he'd bought his collection from a funeral home going out of business. I wondered what he found in such music. The fantasy of a vast chorus of adoring mourners around his coffin? So much about him was a mystery.

I closed the record cabinet door, walked to a window, and gazed outside. Fireflies were flashing on and off between the house and the barn, their lights forming fleeting constellations. I stood and watched for several minutes, feeling strange having nothing more pressing to do than to look out the window at insects. Life with my mother was never like that. Trying to put myself to some use, I picked up
the
sack of butter-and-sugar corn that Owen had brought and put it in the fridge—next to the bag of string beans he'd brought the day before. Why did he bother bringing this stuff when he knew we had a garden of our own? Returning, I wandered about the living room, neatening shelves of books, blowing off dust, realizing how unmistakably manly its furnishings were: the photo of the 1946 Red Sox, the rodent skulls on the mantelpiece, the brass pipe holder, the fly fishing books, the
Sporting News
lying on the cluttered desk. Having never lived with males, I'd always thought them a mysterious breed, and now felt as if I were poking around a museum of masculinity, seeing close up how these strange creatures lived.

I meandered back toward the window and halted. Moths were thronging about the porch light, left on for my father, who was at his editor's weekend house fifty miles away. I hoped he was on his way home by now. Not that he was such charming company, but simply to have another person around. It seemed such a different house without him. I wondered if he felt similarly eager to return, knowing that someone would be waiting—then I viewed the room, and doubted it. It was the living room, but he'd made it his office: a desk where a couch should have been, file cabinets, a typing table, two chairs, his pump organ. Proof of his nonexistent social life, the work of a man who'd chosen isolation.

I looked at the phone, considered calling my mother, but resisted the temptation. I'd have felt obligated to tell my father about the call since it would show up on his bill, and though I didn't mind admitting that I missed my mother and thought about her a lot, I didn't want to give him the chance to crow that I couldn't take solitude.

I walked toward the case that held his own books, tilted my head, and scanned the titles.
Stark's First Case. Death on the Appalachian Trail. Death on Mt. Washington. Elegy for Virgil Stark. Murder at the MacDowell Colony.
I pulled this one out. The cover showed a hung man, his legs dangling beside a typewriter on a desk. I read the description on the inside of the jacket and found it dealt with a vicious literary critic found dead at an artists' retreat. Wishful thinking by my father, I suspected, and flipped through it, suddenly feeling guilty for never having read his books. On the other hand, he'd never read my grade-school stories, or my high-school term papers. I turned to his short biography at the back and saw that I was nowhere mentioned. Something, I knew, that shouldn't have surprised me—yet I felt disappointed. Flipping to the front, I realized that the book wasn't dedicated to anyone. I pulled out three others and found them the same. If it was true that no man is an island, my father was at least a peninsula.

I sat down with the book about the literary critic and had just begun reading when my father drove up. Not wanting to embarrass both of us by gratefully greeting him on the porch, I stayed seated and merely said “Hi” when he entered. He seemed ill-humored, didn't answer, and plopped his wallet and keys on the desk.

“How
did it go with your editor?”

I watched him walk across the room, knowing exactly what he'd do next. While other adults had a drink when they came home, or sat in front of the television, my father relaxed by playing his pump organ.

“Terrific,” he snapped. Sitting down before it, he worked the pedals to build up some pressure, pulled out a few stops, pushed in others, and spoke while he played something sad and slow from a beat-up book of Duke Ellington songs. “My editor is less than thrilled about the manuscript I just submitted. My publisher's verging on bankruptcy. And the accounting department's decided to let three more Virgil Stark books go out of print.”

The organ seemed to be lamenting this news.

“What exactly does ‘out of print' mean?”

My father looked peeved. “What it means is
dead
! No longer stocked and sold! Kaput!”

I searched for something consoling to say.

“Six titles dropped in the last two years!” In his agitation he pressed the pedals harder, raising the organ's volume and forcing him to speak even louder to be heard above it. “It's like having your garden ravaged by grasshoppers! Or seeing your children slain before your eyes!” He swayed back and forth on his stool while he played. “Parents, they say, should die before their children. Likewise, authors before their books. Something I thought I'd doubtless accomplish, given the condition of my heart.”

I rolled my eyes. He flipped a page and returned to the beginning of the song.

“Maybe you should try something besides mysteries.” I thought I'd made a helpful suggestion. When the music halted at once, I knew better.

“After twenty-one years, twelve short stories, and seventeen novels—
abandon
Virgil Stark?”

Instantly, I understood why he didn't subscribe to a newspaper. His poetry-loving detective was real to him; Virgil's latest case was his news. He was sustained by his artificial world, with no interest in the one reported in the papers, the one my mother and I tried to better. Were all artists, I wondered, so self-absorbed?

“This
is the advice of the prospective heir whose duties would include continuing the series in my absence?''

“I withdraw the proposal.” I could see I'd be better off changing the subject. “By the way, your friend Flora called while you were gone.”

My father got up and took a pipe from his rack. “Friend!” He packed it with tobacco and
lit
it. “God save me from that woman's clutches. Something He could easily do, by making my next book a bestseller. One look at my name on the
New York Times
list and that pest, doomed to the failure she pretends to admire, would never speak to me again.” He smiled at the thought.

“I put the note on your desk.”

“With luck I won't find it. As you may have noticed, Neatness is only a very minor deity in my personal pantheon.”

I viewed his desktop, covered to a depth of six inches with books, papers, note pads, and what looked like a month's worth of unopened mail. “The same,” I remarked, “apparently goes for the god of prompt replies.” I waved off a smoke cloud drifting my way.

“Mail improves with age, like wine. Something your mother never understood. She couldn't let a letter sit for a day without answering it.” He shook his head. “No doubt she spent a past life in debtors' prison, and determined this time around to be a creditor in every department—including that of correspondence. Always took pleasure in knowing the tides of mail were running in her direction. The Fundy Theory of Epistolary Behavior. No doubt she's written an article on it.”

I crossed the room to dodge a fresh bank of smoke.

“Or perhaps,” he went on, “she was attempting to single-handedly overload the postal system, hoping it would collapse and bring the government crashing down along with it.”

“Better than single-handedly propping up the tobacco companies, as you're doing.”

My father snorted and stared out at the fireflies. “If you haven't decided on a course of study in college, maybe you ought to consider a major in withering sarcasm.”

Actually, I'd grown tired of such sniping. Searching for another change of topic, I picked up from his desk a piece of paper with “Bordeaux Bombers: 109-71” typed at the top. Below that was “Toulouse Guillotines: 104-76.” I held the sheet out toward him. “What's this?''

He turned. “Final standings.”

“Final standings of what?”

“This year's French baseball.”

I considered his answer. “I didn't know that they played baseball in France.”

He gazed back out the window. “You're right—they don't. It's my own private, winter league. Imaginary.”

I looked down at the other teams on the list: the Aries Impressionists, Marseilles Escargots, Perpignan Red Sox, Avignon Popes . . .

“All the towns are in the south of France, where baseball could be played all year. I set up
a
schedule, then flip a ten-franc coin to decide who wins each day's games. Helps pass the time between October and April.”

I puzzled over this odd amusement.

“My parents took Leo and me with them to France one summer,” my father volunteered. He returned to the organ, fiddled with the stops, and began playing a light-hearted piece that sounded like it was coming from an accordion. He smiled. “Jesus, what a beautiful countryside! And what a terrific time we had. Eating a lifetime's worth of pastries. Gawking at the rabbits in the butcher shops. Amazing the locals with our baseball gloves. Have you ever been?”

“Not yet,” I replied.

“We ought to think about going sometime.” He glanced over his shoulder at me. “We had a farmhouse that year. Just outside of Aries. Maybe that's why I root for the Impressionists every winter.”

“The Impressionists.” I couldn't help but laugh at the notion. “At first base—Vincent van Gogh, I suppose.”

“The team's leadoff hitter. Scrappy. Hot-tempered. Occasionally taunted by fans cutting off their ears and throwing them onto the field. Followed in the batting order by Pissarro.”

“Then Gauguin.”

“Right. Just brought up from the minor league club in Tahiti,” my father declared above the music.

“And Renoir.”

“Not much speed on the basepaths. But a good long ball hitter.”

I tried to think of another French painter, wanting to prolong the game. “Monet?”

“Center field. Apt to study the grass out there and lose track of the score. Batting ahead of Toulouse-Lautrec.”

“Known for drinking too much,” I offered. “And for regularly missing the team bus.”

He finished the piece he'd been playing and turned around on his stool toward me. “And for having the smallest strike zone in the league.”

I winced. It was a terrible joke. But it was wonderful to find myself enjoying being with my father, for a change. “Would part of my job be to keep this league running?”

“It's really not much trouble,” he replied.

“I suppose I'd need to start smoking too,” I said in jest. “And playing the pump organ.”

“Smoking is optional,” he answered, apparently in all seriousness. “Though Virgil smokes a pipe, and it would be best that whoever continues the series knows a bit about pipes and tobacco. As it
happens,
he also plays the pump organ. A great fan of Duke Ellington's music, Virgil is. And extremely attached to the Mozart
Requiem
—a piece you'd need to know quite well.”

He opened up his record cabinet. Knowing what was coming next, I said good night, climbed the stairs, and heard beneath me the sort of classical music I loathed and that Virgil no doubt loved. And knew that if I ever took over the series, I'd have to broaden his tastes.

7
/ Girl With Goat

First, I'm aware of the breeze picking up. Aspen leaves, which register the faintest movement of air, are trembling, causing the trees to shimmer like mirages.

Next, I notice the sky clouding over. The sun weakens. My shadow disappears, leaving me to ride on alone.

A few miles later I hear thunder far off. Shortly after that I glimpse lightning to my left. Pedaling past a lumber mill, I feel the first of the drops on my back.

No problem, I calmly inform myself. The paper called only for scattered showers. My shoulders can use a break from the sun. Some cool rain would feel great. And I'm riding on rubber, so there's no need to worry about electrocution. By the time I've finished delivering this glowing State of the Ride report, the wind is nearly blowing me backward, the rain is coming down like crazy, and I'm ready to consider selling my soul to the Devil for a room at a Motel 6.

Soaked, I reach a junction and stop. As if nothing could be more ordinary, I get off my bike, open my map, and, with sheets of rain sweeping over me, slowly figure out where I am. I turn onto Highway 520, headed south, pass a cow standing out in the downpour, and feel a sense of kinship with it. I consider holing up somewhere, but there's nothing but pasture on both sides of the road. Reminding myself of my sunset deadline, and feeling my father's eyes upon me, I decide to try to ride out the storm. I lower my cap, work my way up a monstrous hill, and find that I can't coast down it—as justice demands that I should—thanks to the wind blasting in my face. Indignantly, I press on the pedals, feeling like I'm riding through peanut butter, cursing out loud while knowing full well that it wouldn't have been safe to zip downhill, since my brakes aren't working in the blasted rain.