The Portable Veblen (21 page)

She kissed him and loved him intensely then, as she always did when they laughed about something together.

•   •   •

D
RIFTING TO SLEEP,
Veblen reflected on how she was sensitive to jealousy and hypervigilant over situations that created it, though in recent years she’d taken to exploring how much jealousy a normal person could stand in comparison to her mother. The rigor of her training had sharpened a fine etiquette scarcely necessary with others.

Take a classic example of her emotional training. Veblen had once slept over at her friend Joanie’s house. Veblen’s mother didn’t like Joanie for a number of reasons, including her manners, her dress, her religion (practiced in a group setting on Sundays), and her family. Joanie’s mother had been a sorority girl at Chico State, had married a contractor, and, though not wealthy, they had built a phony castle of a house. Joanie’s mother curled her hair every day before Joanie’s father came home. At this sleepover, she had the girls make a salad for dinner, and showed them how to peel a cucumber, then run a fat-tined fork down the sides of it so that when it was sliced it looked scalloped, and when Veblen came home from this sleepover and was next helping her mother make a salad, she excitedly displayed the new trick. To her dismay, her mother began to cry and ran out of the kitchen, saying how this was a special thing she’d wanted to teach Veblen herself, and if Joanie’s
mother was such a domestic superstar, then maybe Veblen would rather live there?

Linus was drinking a martini and eating peanuts at the kitchen table. Veblen said, “I don’t understand why she’s mad.”

Linus rattled the ice in his martini glass, and took a sufficient swallow. “Your mother cares about you very much, and probably feels she’s lost an opportunity to teach you something. Why don’t you go into the bedroom and give her a pat and make her feel better?”

Veblen dried her hands on a dish towel. Heading for the bedroom she tightened her core muscles, assessing what would be needed for peace. “Mom?” she whispered.

It was dark in the bedroom. “What is it?”

She forayed into the dark, leaned over the bed. “Mom, sorry you couldn’t show me how to decorate cucumbers.”

Her mother grunted from under the covers.

“You showed me how to make radishes look like roses, remember?”

“Yes, I did,” said her mother, and she opened the covers to allow Veblen in for a cuddle.

Her mother hugged her to her chest. “Does that woman still wear those curlers around the house?”

“Yes,” Veblen said, seeing a way out. “Big pink ones that look like shrimp.”

“And talk about her glory days at Chico State?”

“Yeah!” Veblen howled. “She’s a hollow shell living in the past!”

Her mother laughed. “That’s what I always thought. A very superficial woman. No interests outside the home.”

“No interests at all!” Veblen exclaimed, and her mother tickled
her, and they rejoined Linus in the kitchen, and when her mother turned her back for a second, Linus gave her a grateful nod, and tossed down a funnel of peanuts from his palm.

•   •   •

W
HAT A LOT
of work it had all been, she thought. Still was. Paul wasn’t going to make her work that hard. He’d better not, she thought.

      9

T
HE
S
TOIC
G
LACIER
M
ETHOD

I
n 1920, fearing that his ridge cabin up on the Old La Honda Road had been sold through a mishap with the deed, Thorstein Veblen smashed the windows of the cabin with an ax. His second wife, Babe, was dying, and he’d planned to bring her there to mend, and his grief knew no end.

For the rest of the country, recovering from the Great War, it was a year of optimism. Spirits were so high in the financial sectors, anarchists had no choice but to set off bombs on Wall Street. Veblen lived for a while in a boardinghouse in New York with Mr. James Rorty, author of
Our Master’s Voice,
who regaled him with petrifying stories about the reach of the advertising industry. A massive storm cloud of excess would build during the decade, and Veblen had been fully aware of the collapse that it would bring.

Maybe it was then, Veblen thought now, that he developed his reputation for melancholy, inspiring people to describe him so pathetically, even on highway road signs:

VALDERS MEMORIAL PARK

Hwy. J, Valders, Manitowoc County, Wisconsin

One of Wisconsin’s most controversial figures, Thorstein Bunde Veblen, was born near here July 30, 1857. He was not a popular teacher but attracted dedicated followers. During much of his life, Veblen remained estranged from society. His pale, sick face; beard; loose-fitting clothes; shambling gait; weak voice; and desperate shyness enhanced this estrangement and deepened his loneliness. Yet the society which did not accept Veblen the man did come to value the products of his penetrating mind. His books and articles have been described as perhaps “the most considerable and creative body of social thought that America has produced.”

What nitwit wrote this? Veblen wondered, home alone with her work Sunday morning, Paul having gone out with his family. The indignity, the failure to understand anything about him! The nod to his work, but the most superficial, cowardly appraisal of his person! Sometimes she felt like
nobody
got it when it came to Veblen. All he wanted was less waste, less junk, less vested interests, less counterfeit life. Was that so hard to understand, people?

•   •   •

H
ER SPACIOUS MORNING
was interrupted by a call from her mother, who expected a detailed account of the latest developments
without delay. There was some sun in front on the walkway, and Veblen went outside to ventilate.

“Well?” said her mother. “Did Paul’s family come?”

“Yes, they did. We went out to dinner last night, and they’re coming over here tonight.”

“So? How was it? Did they reveal anything about themselves this time that put you on guard?”

And though she was still feeling resentful about her mother’s attempt to send her to Norway, Veblen made sure not to say the Vreelands were too great, even hinting at the problems Paul had with Justin, because nothing made Melanie feel better than knowing other people had problems.

“Lots of problems.”

“Be more specific.”

“I guess Justin’s problems kind of eclipsed Paul’s childhood.”

“Is that what he said?”

“Not exactly,” said Veblen, hearing in the rise of her mother’s voice a forming judgment.

“Hmm,” said her mother.

“Last night Paul’s brother almost choked to death in the restaurant,” Veblen threw in, to distract her.

“It’s not uncommon. Many people sit down for a nice meal and keel over dead, with no condition at all.”

“Right. Anyway, I think you’ll like them, within reason. They can’t wait to meet you.”

“Well, good,” said her mother, as if people looked forward to meeting her every day. “They’re not snobby?”

“No! Not snobby at all.”

“They’re not—shallow?”

“No.” Veblen leaned over and pulled up the taproot of a sow thistle.

“I had a very unpleasant dream last night,” her mother said, changing course as a result of hearing too much good news.

“What was it?”

“That you and Paul couldn’t marry. That something went wrong.”

“Is that wishful thinking?”

“No, Veblen. Don’t pursue that. It’s beneath you. Anyway, the dream made me worry.”

“It’s normal for you to worry, so don’t worry.” She found another thistle to pull, allowing the pleasant smell of the ground to waft up with the root.

“How does Paul’s father treat his wife? That’s very telling.”

“He’s very nice to her.”

“How do they treat their disabled son?”

“They’re nice to him too,” Veblen said. “But it’s tricky.”

“Oh?” Her mother’s voice brightened considerably.

“I haven’t figured it out yet. I need to watch them a little more.”

“Well, watch, then. It’s important you know what you’re getting into. Are you having any doubts?”

“No, no doubts.”

“Veblen, that’s not normal.”

“My whole life you’ve told me
normal
is
bad
.”

“Veblen, why can’t we just talk like two friends? I’d like to know what you’re feeling!”

“I’m telling you how I feel. I feel happy.”

Her mother let out a dissatisfied sigh. “I sit here waiting for any scrap of news from you. It’s pathetic.”

She definitely would not tell her mother about the squirrel following them to the restaurant and spelling
muumuu,
then hitching a ride over to the motel. “Mom, did you ever have a wedding ring?”

“Yes, I had a hideous little gewgaw from Rudgear but I got rid of it a long time ago. You know what I did with it? I hurled it out the window while driving down the highway.”

“Good for you, Mom. That’s your style.”

“And, dear, need I ask—are you taking your medications?”

“Yes. I’m fine. I’m really good.”

“No twenty-four-hour crying jags?”

“None.”

“Paul’s parents certainly get to see more of you than I do,” her mother complained.

“I’m planning to make your pork tenders recipe for dinner,” Veblen offered, shaking out her welcome mat.

“You have to use fresh parsley, not dried,” her mother said. “Will you have fresh parsley?”

“Yes.”

“And tenderloin? You can’t use chops.”

“
Two
tenderloins,” Veblen said.

“In the vacuum-sealed package?”

“Yep.”

“Let me know how it turns out. Will I hear from you tomorrow?”

“Yes, Mom.”

“Wonderful. Live!”

“I’m trying!” she said, kicking a sodden magnolia pod into the street.

•   •   •

V
EBLEN THOUGHT
about her mother’s imperative to
live!
later that day, while cleaning the place and cooking. How, exactly, was that supposed to happen? Was making pork tenderloin her mother’s idea of living? Or simply that Veblen was forming new relationships with new people? She wondered if her mother would ever move beyond her current phase, hiding out in Cobb, venturing out only to go to the Rescue Squad Thrift Store. She’d been to the Rescue Squad with her mother many times, wondering why her mother felt so alive there. The shop was filled with racks of old garments and linens, shelves of broken toys and worn shoes. One whole room held telephones and lamps and outdated appliances. The older women who ran the shop knew her mother by name. “Hello, Melanie!” they’d hail her when she came in to determine the quality of the latest haul. In her bearing at the Rescue Squad was the hint of a scout from Sotheby’s. What happened to her mother, why was that her life?

Veblen had once read an illustration of her mother’s syndrome in the William James essay “The Energies of Men.” It described the “habit of inferiority to our full self. . . . The human individual . . . possesses powers of various sorts which he habitually fails to use.”

Come to think of it, she could surely be accused of the same.

•   •   •

T
HAT AFTERNOON
a sudden wind shook the trees and swept off paths and walkways, only to litter them again with debris from the trees. A bird’s nest came down on the sidewalk, luckily without eggs in it. A heavy branch broke on a magnolia tree down the
street, and remained attached by a thick band of bark, folded beside the old trunk like a broken wing. The power went out for a while. Veblen didn’t mind; she had her good old typewriter.

Young Veblen would hide in the attic to read old newsprint. A thrifty family does not make single use of anything, and papers went upstairs maybe for reading or maybe for insulation or maybe for both. The language in the newspapers was elegant, and he compared all the words he knew in his mother tongue to the words he read in the new. Many came from Old Norse, such as
anger
and
awkward
, and
geyser
and
gosling
, and
husband
and
hell
, and
outlaw
and
ransack
, and
thrift
and
want
and
wrong
.

In the newspapers he came upon countless advertisements for all sorts of strange, newfangled things:

*Steel Collars Enameled White! Having the appearance and comfort of linen, readily cleaned with a sponge!

*Non-Explosive Lamps, from the Non-Explosive Lamp Company! Satisfy yourself on the truth of this assertion!

*Electric Belts by the Pulvermacher Galvanic Co! Bands and appliances for the cure of Nervous, Chronic, Special Diseases! Avoid vendors of Bogus Belts and Appliances, especially the tricky concerns who pretend to send belts on trial!

He believed less in god than the struggle of a thinker in his nightshirt.

He cried at the death of a caterpillar.

He took apart a dead squirrel bone by bone.

He kept acorns in a can until they popped forth with maggots.