Spirit of the Place (9781101617021) (19 page)

Later during a break in the action, he walked out into the parking lot and searched in his pockets for the half-smoked Parodi and matches. The night was crisp. The little town was iced up and the air tasted like cold quarters and seemed stretched tight as an eardrum so it was like you could hear everything. He thought of the dead twin who would always be almost there, floating there like all the dead, and the live twin. He thought of Miranda, of her histories and of their lovemaking, and he whispered out loud, “This is the one that will survive.”

· 14 ·

By New Year's Eve, whenever Orville said, “Hi, Cray,” the boy would look at him. Once, he might even have said something back, but too softly to make out.

Miranda and Orville were spending New Year's Eve at the hot social event in Columbia, the dinner-dance-swim at Schooner's Spa out at the mall on Route 9. They had arranged for Amy to babysit and sleep over. Cray liked having Amy around, and Amy liked being a big sister. And so Miranda and Orville bid them good-night and said they would see them next year. The kids were so engrossed with Amy helping Cray write his first novel that they hardly even noticed the adults were going and then gone.

Orville kept right on being surprised by Henry Schooner. Henry had done a similar party his first year back; this second one made the event a Columbian institution. Anyone who was anyone was there, and a few Columbians who were not really anyone were there too. The food—all you could eat from a room-long buffet—was a mix of Columbia and worldly: steak and fries, salmon and salad, pad thai and pork ribs, plantains and egg foo, Knickerbocker and Perrier, and Pepsi and Gallo. The ambiance was unheard-of in Columbia: all glittering chrome and mirrors and a whirlpool with steamy water bubbling at one end of the near-Olympic-sized pool. In the separate locker rooms the saunas were scented with stuff from Sweden. There were not only free weights but sparkly exercise equipment previously unseen in Columbia—Nautilus and StairMaster and high-tech pneumatic machines guaranteed against breakage that made weight training as painless as watching TV. Television seemed to be the leitmotif, not only the four TV monitors—one for each channel—suspended in a row from the ceiling and facing the stationary bicycles and treadmills but in the persons of their hosts, Henry and Nelda Jo.

Orville had gotten into the habit of what he called “Schooner Watching.” Now he watched Henry, dressed in a dinner jacket with a pink carnation boutonniere and white hair slicked down tight, gliding as if on rollers here and there, filling glasses and egos, and doing that two-handed clasp and then in the same motion handing the person off so that he could handle the next—much like a TV game show host. He watched Nelda Jo, hair now platinum to match Henry's, in a lavender spandex top that scooped and stretched timelessly across her breasts and a short flowered miniskirt also stretching athletically every-which-rounded-way, smiling and coaxing lesser-toned Columbians of both sexes to give the machines a try. She looked like that woman on TV at six in the morning who showed you how to improve your body, your life, your world. Her Oklahoman good humor was infectious. She was clearly the hit of the party.

Orville and Miranda felt shy and out of place, their long histories as wallflowers at school dances pushing them out from the action toward the walls. For a brief moment they were alone.

“Nineteen eighty-four, imagine?” Orville said.

“Yes.” She quoted Orwell, “‘We are living in a world where it is virtually impossible to be honest and remain alive.'”

But a small town won't allow that aloneness, not in the presence of a palpable new happiness, and people sought them out, dragged them over, enticed them in to try food, conversation, normalcy.

“I always knew you two were meant for each other, old buddy,” Henry said, pumping Orville's arm, having given Miranda a European two-cheeked kiss. “Your mom would be so pleased!” With a hint of reluctance, Henry let go and ushered him off to Nelda Jo and moved on to the next guest.

“You two be careful not to behave,” Nelda Jo drawled and winked.

Penny made a big deal of their being together, a more frank deal probably than she intended because she was champagne-drunk. “I can' believe it, little brother, how you're into
fun.
Y'know, Miranda, he never let himself go, never really got into just plain having
fun.
Cerebral, him. I never woulda thought it, especially not with you, Miranda, because if you'll pardon th'expression, you're every bit as much a character as himself.” She left, Orville and Miranda rolling their eyes at each other. Then she came back. “And what you're doing with Amy is
unreal.
Keep that up too.”

“Except for the socialist part and so forth,” Milt said, munching a burrito. “What a spread, eh?” He watched Nelda Jo pass by. “And the food's not bad either. Haha.” Laughter seemed to consolidate a thought. “Henry's a comer, Orv. A real comer.”

The party got wilder. Columbians flopped and frolicked in the pool and pumped some iron and danced to ear-splitting oldies and newies.

“Sorry,” Miranda said. “I can't dance.”

“Thank God. I can't either. You know, it's amazing. Even people who hate each other's guts are talking, having fun.”

“Yeah, it's small—”

The music blasted.

“What?” Orville shouted.

“It's small-town life!” she shouted back.

“Community?”

“Not really, no,” she shouted. “Not since 1790—”

The music stopped suddenly and Miranda's “1790!” rang out like nobody's business. Everyone turned to look and then laughed and hustled to ring in 1984. As soon as possible Orville and Miranda left and were suddenly embraced by the arctic stillness of the night.

Orville held her arm firmly. “Careful, it's icy.”

“Thanks.”

At the car, Orville looked up at the stars, pointing out the bright jewels on the sword and belt of Orion—Betelgeuse and the smudged seven sisters of the Pleiades—and gave a sweet little lecture on the mythology. They hugged and kissed, and he held open the car door and helped her in.

When they arrived back at Miranda's house, they found Cray in his pajamas, asleep on the floor, clutching a large book. Amy was asleep on the couch. The TV buzzed white noise, the video having run its course long ago.

“Should we just let them sleep down here?” Orville asked.

“Yes.”

He took her hand and turned toward the stairs.

“Wait, love. Look, just for a second. Look with me.” Together they took in the beauty of the sleeping children.

“Momma?”

“Yes, dear. Orvy, too.” Cray shot a sleepy glance at both of them. “C'mon. To bed.”

“Wanna read this book.” He held up an orange book with elephants on the cover, two adults and three kids,
Babar and His Children.

“
Part
of it,” Miranda said, readying herself for a fight. Cray hated half-measures. “It's so late, cute-heart, and the book's way too long—”

“Okay, but only if Orvy reads it to me.”

Orville was delighted. “Okay.”

Cray got up and climbed the stairs, the two of them following, and snuggled down in his bed. Orville, unfamiliar with fathering, perched on the edge. Cray motioned him to lie down next to him, which he did. But then Cray said, “No, no. Lion Army, Lion Army.”

“Lion Army? I thought it was about elephants?”

“No, I mean lie-on-arm-ey. Lie-on-arm-ey.” Cray raised himself up and turned around and took Orville's arm and put it under him so he could lie on it and snuggle in.

Miranda watched the two of them from the doorway, the awkward man and the sleepy little boy. She thought, Each of them is hungry for this.

Cray's freshly baby-shampooed head against his cheek stirred up such feeling in Orville that he could barely focus on reading. As if a father, he thought. As if a father. “Elephants are my favorite, too.” As he read, Orville recognized this Babar book as one he had loved as a child. When he came to page 16—where baby Flora swallows a rattle and turns purple and Queen Celeste tries a pre-Heimlich slap unsuccessfully before the monkey Zephir pulls the rattle out—he found that he recalled every detail, even the position of the eight drawings on the page! It brought back the
bufala mozzarella
and Celestina, but he was surprised and relieved that the memory held no hurt anymore.

Miranda leaned against the doorjamb. Seeing this man she loved make the move toward fathering, she felt her heart lighten, lift, her whole being lift so it seemed she had to hold on to the door to stay down on the ground. Her face flushed, her eyes teared up, her heart opened like a new tulip. Orville had crossed a line drawn like diamond on steel, a line between parent and nonparent, and at that moment she felt no fear, no doubt. There was nothing shy about him right now. She felt her good hip cuddle into the molding of the doorway of the old house that must have seen everything, and the voice inside her say, Maybe there's a God after all.

Lying on the man's arm, Cray felt the comforter of sleep cover him. He yawned and murmured, “S'nuff,” and lifted his head and shoulders to give Orville back his arm. He turned over on his side and settled in under the quilt, riffling the edge of “Shirty,” a tattered soft shirt, through the fingers of one hand.

Miranda went to him and kissed him. “Good night, sleep tight. Love you.”

Orville said, “G'nite, Cray.”

Nothing—except from under the comforter maybe a giggle.

Orville said, “Hi, Cray.”

“Hi.”

“Hi,
who?
”

“Hi,
Orvy.
”

“Oh, I
love
that word!” Orville said, happily.

Cray peeped out from under the quilt, glanced at Orville, then Miranda, the look on his face saying, Who is this nut anyway?

Downstairs, on the kitchen table, they found Cray's novel, each page illustrated with a drawing.

THE DOG

A novel by
Cray Braak

The dog livd on the strets

Becass he did not hav a

Homm

He etss grbg

1 day he cam to a prkk.

A man sied I will tac you homm

The man wkt and wkt into a

Car. The dog flold him

So the man toc him homm to

Hss hos.

Wan he plld into the drivway

The dog lokd arownd.

THE END

· 15 ·

Two Columbian ice fishermen and their dog had a bright idea. It was the end of January. The Hudson was ice-locked. Even though they never caught anything much in the polluted river when it was free of ice, many Columbians imagined that when ice a foot thick covered it the fish would reappear. Their greatest difficulty in ice fishing was not keeping warm. After all, they would drink enough beer so that it acted like antifreeze, and they would drag portable gas stoves out to their huts on the river. The difficulty was cutting through the ice. Many male Columbians had a love affair with internal combustion. They often seemed at a loss when their hands were not wrapped around the shuddering steering wheel of a car, truck, van, tractor, bulldozer, wrecking crane, or Bobcat. And one of the sweetest moments in this love affair was when their manly hands were caressing a chainsaw. Yet in the dead heart of winter, a chainsaw required just that little bit extra presence of mind from inebriated Columbians to cut through the ice without shearing off a toe or a foot or a leg.

At dawn on this viciously cold day, the two Columbian ice fishermen and their dog had the bright idea of using dynamite to blast their hole in the frozen river. They drove their pickup out onto the ice toward the neglected old lighthouse. They got out, all three. They managed to identify the fuse end of a stick of dynamite, congratulating themselves on their creative intelligence and hardly able to contain their excitement. One held the stick of dynamite. From his cigar, the other lit it. It sizzled, a fuzzy phosphorescence. The Columbian threw the lit stick a long way away. It sailed in a high sputtering arc out toward the decaying lighthouse.

They watched—first in drunken puzzlement mixed with a hint of satisfaction at the order of the world, then in drunken horror as their dog ran after the stick of dynamite, fetched it, and started barreling back toward them. See the dog run. See the Columbians run. See how fast the dog runs. See how slow the men run.

At the time of the explosion, Orville was at Miranda's kitchen table finishing up “Egg Trickee” before driving Cray to Sixth Street Elementary School.

“How many?” Orville asked Cray, holding a square piece of Cray's morning omelet in the palm of his hand. The birds and the cats watched too.

“One!”

“Miranda?”

“Two.”

Orville flipped the piece of omelet up in the air and tried to catch it in his mouth. He missed the first time. The second time he did it.

“Not again!” Cray cried. “I never win anymore.”

”You won yesterday,” Orville said, leaning over and making a great show of kissing Miranda on the lips. Whoever got the right number got kissed by Orville. If neither of them called it right, he kissed his own reflection in the mirror. Cray dawdled over his breakfast, reluctant to go to school. As they were all headed out the door, the call came in about the exploding ice fishermen and their dog. Orville said he was on his way.

The door of the Chrysler had hardly closed and the engine barely rolled over when Cray said, “Can we play the Animal Guessing Game?”

Cray had invented the game. One person thinks of an animal, and the other two have to guess it. After five wrong guesses there are clues.

“Orvy, you think of one first,” Cray said.

“Okay.”

“You got it?” Cray asked.

“Not yet.” Orville was always amazed at the speed at which Cray's mind worked, compared to his own. A six-year-old brain versus a thirty-nine-year-old model. Growth versus decay. He paused, as if thinking, and then said, “Got it. But I warn you, Cray, this time it's a hard one. Real hard.”

“I go first, okay, Mom?”

“Fine.”

“Is it a . . .” Cray stopped, finding out that he had no idea what was at the end of the sentence he had started. “A tree sloth?”

Orville feigned amazement. “Did you say . . . a tree sloth?”

“Yeah!” Cray was bouncing out of his seat with excitement.

“You didn't say . . . a tree sloth, did you?”

“I did, I did! Mom, you heard me, I did!”

“Unbelievable!” Orville said. “It
was
a tree sloth.”

“I knew it!”

“How'd you do that, Cray?”

“I
always
get it with you.”

“You sure do,” Orville said, nodding with grave assurance.

“My turn,” Cray said. He thought. “Okay. Guess.”

Miranda sat and listened with amusement. Orville connected with Cray by joking around. Cray loved it, mostly, but once in a while he got a confused look on his face, not knowing if Orville was joking or serious. Amy, who Cray now called Big Sister, told him the other day, “The thing about Uncle O., Cray, is that he's a big joker, so you can't tell sometimes whether he's serious or not.” Miranda knew the dangers of too much joking around. Orville didn't yet seem to realize that kids need to know where you really stand. She kept reminding herself that Orville had never been a father. He didn't have six-plus years in the trenches, hadn't felt the humiliation and ineptitude and, worse, the rage that comes with parenting. He just plain didn't know how to do it. And Cray came with no instruction manual. To see Orville using the outdated manual of his own father was both touching and disheartening.

How reluctant he had been to join in with Cray and her and sing out loud in public, or even in the car. When sureness was needed, how shy he seemed, and when pliancy was needed, how sure. The worst, though, was how impatient he was with child-time, those moments when, needing to get somewhere in a hurry, Cray would suddenly discover a toy he couldn't leave the house without but couldn't find, or a book or a worm in the yard, and dawdle. Orville had trouble realizing that it isn't only what you do with a child but what you don't do, what you ignore, or even, after you screw up, what you do next.

Neither did he realize how having him around didn't make it much easier, because she had to take care of not only Cray but him. There was also the Cray-Orville thing, the Cray-herself-and-Orville thing, and the herself-and-Orville thing. And all the while she had to hide the constancy of her caretaking from them both.

But she loved how he jumped right in with Cray and when he found himself in over his head, how he thrashed around, fighting to break the surface. His energy had made some things better: there were fewer skirmishes in The War of the Wakeup and The War of the Getting Out of the House to School on Time. But The Great Battle of Bedtime had escalated. Cray was responding so intensely to this father-y person in his life that the Sleepytime Skirmishes were worse. Cray didn't want to shut off the world of Mom and Dad, and who could blame him?

As they drove into Columbia, the day darkened. It was one of the bad cement dust days, the wind blowing in from the Universal Atlas. The buildings and bundled-up Columbians were gray, spectral shapes, and the vinegar scent was an acrid backdrop to a world of broken sunlight. Orville dropped Cray off at Sixth Street School and Miranda at the library down on Fourth and headed for the emergency room.

The dynamite had rearranged the life force between the two fishermen and their dog. The front half of the dog and the lower half of one man had been blown off. Both were dead. The other Columbian was okay, except for a hand and arm that looked vaguely like a leg of lamb trussed up by a drunken butcher, a silver belt buckle embedded in his crotch, and a case of hysterical weeping.

“Nigel! Nigel!” the fisherman bawled. “Nigel!”

“I'm sorry. Your friend is dead, but you've got to hold still!”

“Friend?
Friend?
Nigel was my dog!”

As Orville sliced and diced and patched and matched, seeking to create an arm as useful as a thalidomide flipper, he tried to reconstruct the scene on the Hudson. The dog must have been in the process of giving the dynamite to the dead Columbian when the live Columbian threw himself not on the dynamite to save his buddy but on his buddy to save himself. How else would a belt buckle with the name J. Rhodes get embedded in the crotch of a man named Ulysses Stoiber?

Works of art are not finished but abandoned, he thought, as he walked downhill to Eighth and the Hendrick Hudson Diner for coffee. Along the way he noticed that the empty storefront next to the never-open Suttee's—where as a kid he'd bought long strings of rock candy, probably the same stuff still hanging in the window—was now dressed up in red-white-and-blue bunting and a new sign:

VOTE AMERICA

VOTE SCHOONER

“Happy Days Are Here Again” played from a loudspeaker. A crowd had gathered. Orville moseyed on over. It turned out to be the grand opening of the Henry Schooner for Congress Campaign Headquarters. The aging long-term incumbent, a Republican with old fascistic proclivities and a new young wife and Alfa Romeo, was retiring to become a lobbyist. The Republican primary in September was wide-open. Schooner was ready.

As Orville watched, a many-colored crocodile of children in their winter outfits, puffs of breath like cartoon blurbs above their heads, wended its way across the Seventh Street Park to the Schooner headquarters. A teacher escorted them. Orville recognized red-headed Cray bundled up, paired with Maxie Schooner. The first-grade class was getting a living lesson in democracy. Cray saw him and shouted, waving him to come over. Orville did. As he approached, he saw Henry and Nelda Jo and teenaged Henry Jr. standing bareheaded and without jackets on the sidewalk in the dusty, freezing cold. Maxie broke rank and ran to Henry, who lifted him high up in his arms. Catching sight of Orville, Henry smiled broadly and motioned him to come closer.

Why, Orville wondered, does Henry always seem so happy to see me?

The scene was chaotic, amateurish. Music was playing too loudly, kids were shouting and fooling around, mittened hands kept spilling the cups of punch or coffee or hot cocoa or dropping the cookies or doughnuts. Nelda Jo and Henry Jr. wandered aimlessly among the crush of Columbians and New York antiquers. No one was organizing anything. It was a mess.

Henry pumped his hand, shouting, “Glad you could make it to the opening, Orv—”

A sudden spotlight, fighting the dull gray cement dust. A TV camera from the Albany station had started shooting. Flashbulbs popped. Henry smiled at the cameras. The TV lights went off. Henry moved on to the next hand.

For a while Orville stood there and watched what seemed to him a pathetic launch of Schooner's campaign. Even Schooner the Great, he thought, isn't immune to the Columbian Spirit. Yet walking away down Washington toward his office, Orville was struck by what had
not
happened: no breakage. And it wasn't until he was all the way down to the office on Fifth that he realized that he'd been had.

He turned around and ran back. By this time the music was off. The children were gone. Henry was alone in the office, sitting upright behind a metal-topped desk that looked like it came straight out of the war surplus at Geiger's junkyard. He was smoking a cigar, studying a neatly folded
Wall Street Journal.

“Henry, you can't use . . .” Orville was unable to catch his breath and made yet another mental vow to lose the weight he was gaining by eating like the Columbians—and to stop smoking.

“Why, hello there, Dr. Rose!” he said cheerfully. “Siddown, siddown.”

“Henry, you can't use me on TV.”

“What's that, buddy?”

“That camera, that TV videocam that was shooting me shaking your hand?” Henry nodded. “You can't broadcast it. I won't let you give the impression that I'm supporting your run for Congress.”

“Really?” His face showed such surprise and hurt that Orville winced a little. “Well, okay,” Henry went on, recovering his good cheer. “If I'd knew you felt that way, I never would have let 'em ran it right then.” This time Henry didn't catch Orville noticing his bad grammar. “No problem, Orv. I got the TV guy's number right here.” Henry dialed. Waited. “Axel? Henry . . . Yeah, thanks. Hey, listen, you can't use anything with the picture of Dr. Orville Rose in it, okay? What's he look like?” Henry described him, in a flattering way. “You run that piece of tape, you never get an exclusive again, get it? Great.” He hung up. “Done.”