The Portable Veblen (26 page)

The squirrel rattled the bars.

“You’re too smart to be trapped. Did you
want
to be trapped?”

The squirrel provided no clue.

“I’m sorry, you fine squirrel.” And she made a quick decision. She pulled the trap closer and carefully lifted it down. The squirrel sat still and exuded great dignity and courage in its present circumstances. “I’ll make sure you get to a good place. I can’t promise what Paul might do if he found you.”

She transported the squirrel outside, her face close enough to his body to smell him, a warm, lovable smell, like the top of a baby’s head. She placed the cage on the front seat of her mustard-colored Volvo. A plan was rapidly forming, and after a quick look at her watch she began to pack an overnight bag, along with the assortment of supplies she’d been stockpiling to deliver to her father.

“I know a place full of squirrels for you to meet,” she said, throwing her things into the car.

Did he appear to listen? She was so sentimental!

And in no time she hit the road, feeling encouraged by the squirrel’s appraisal of her actions.

•   •   •

I
T WAS A GOOD HOUR
before she called Paul, past Salinas.

“Now?” he said, sounding almost shocked. “Where are you?”

“Near Soledad.”

“It’s weird you just went. Why didn’t you warn me?”

“I’m telling you now. Don’t you have a conference tonight?”

“Yeah, but I thought we’d go
together
to see your father!”

She said calmly that maybe his opinions on her mother were enough for the time being.

To which he replied, “So you
are
punishing me!”

She mumbled something about plenty of time for that. And
then asked him about the plans for her mother, the trial, what was the big idea with that?

The squirrel let out a few clucks, as three CH-47 Chinook helicopters ripped through the sky on their way to training exercises at Camp Roberts.

“She loves me now, doesn’t she?” Paul said.

“Well, she’s assuming it was a caring gesture. But do you really think she belongs in that program?”

“Sure, why not? The adrenals came to me in the middle of the night, like an inspiration.” He laughed in a sinister way.

She shuddered. All she wanted was to walk down the sidewalk holding hands, looking at gardens, mentioning whatever she felt like mentioning, feeling happy, maybe whistling.
They had done that!

“No, really, I’ve been doing a lot of—thinking,” Paul said. “Your mother and I could end up best friends. I think she has some wounds I can relate to on some level.”

Her eyes widened. “Really? That’s not necessary.”

Paul said, “By the way, the Hutmacher caterer called me, wants to discuss the menu. I didn’t know what to say.”

“Yeah, I guess we need to decide what we’re doing,” Veblen said flatly.

“If we go for it, the choices are some kind of beef
en croûte
or chicken Veronica.”

“Gee, I’m not sure I’d want either. What
is
chicken Veronica?”

“Chicken with some kind of sauce—maybe with grapes.”

“Now you’re punishing
me
. How about neither?”

“You know, other couples spend hours poring over these details. Aren’t you excited about our wedding?”

“Of course I am,” she replied, changing ears.

“What about a gift registry?” Paul said next. “People have been asking me what we want.”

“Ugh, those seem so greedy.”

“People
like
them, Veblen. It helps them choose.”

“William James liked to say, ‘Materialism’s sun sets in a sea of disappointment’!” She was in the mood to be annoying.

“What a killjoy!” Paul said.

“Do you know the Easterlin paradox? It’s that your happiness shrinks in proportion to how much stuff you have.”

“Now you’re against gifts of any kind?” Paul asked, sounding slightly enraged.

She told him not to worry, they’d have their gift registry, and to wait until she got back. “In the meantime, you should read Tim Kasser’s
The High Price of Materialism
and Gregg Easterbrook’s
The Progress Paradox,
and David Brooks’s
Bobos in Paradise
,
”
she continued, willfully.

Paul said, “I guess I’d better not tell you there’s a boat I’m interested in.”

“A boat?”

“It’s a thirty-two-foot Weekender made by Sea Ray. Do you know anything about boats?”

“Nothing,” she said.

“Well, the Sea Ray is a very nice brand of boat, and it would be pretty amazing to have it.”

“I don’t know why, but all I can think of is
commodity fetishism
.”

“This one—I went out today to see it—is incredible. And guess how much?”

“Now we’re getting into
affluenza
.”

“This boat’s in mint condition. It’s a 2004, but the family only used it a few times before the father was called to duty in Afghanistan from the National Guard. His wife wants eight thousand dollars.”

“Isn’t that taking advantage of someone when they’re down?”

“Her husband almost tore my arm off today, by the way,” Paul said.

“Sorry,” Veblen said. The extraneous status symbol brought to mind a vast trove of writings Veblen had familiarized herself with about the
extended self
. “I never knew you wanted a boat.”

“I’ve always wanted one,” Paul said. “But I still have to find out about berths and insurance. It might be a little out of reach.”

“A boat. Okay, I didn’t know.”

They said their good-byes, that they’d talk later, the skin on her face stiff with the effort of civility.

The gray highway rolled beneath her. The Salinas Valley was busy with vegetables. She passed vans filled with field workers coming home, shining RVs, dusty trucks. In a short while she turned on the headlights and began to let down her guard.

“Am I genetically doomed?” This thought always bothered her, and it was her stated goal not to be taken advantage of by her genes. “Can you tell?

“When Paul criticizes my mother it feels worse than it should. Because she’s not me, right? But it ruins my wish that I’ve met someone who fully accepts her, and therefore fully accepts me. She’s like a secret third breast! And I’d been hoping for a person who wouldn’t scream and run away when he sees it. Figuratively, of course.” (She and Albertine had once theorized that Hillary
Clinton had a third breast, based on a suggestive shadow in a photo.)

“Meanwhile, Paul’s family is really nice, and he acts like they’re
his
third breast and that
I
should run away screaming. But I don’t want to run away screaming!”

It seemed the squirrel sensed the gravity of the matter. She began to type
Easy Courtship Disrupted by Angst
on her steering wheel.

Shortened it to
ECDBA. ECDBA. ECDBA
 . . .

“Do you criticize your family to everybody you meet? You probably all get along and love each other. I want to belong to a family like that. My next question is: should I look for someone who belongs to that kind of family? My hunch is no, because then it would be like I’m marrying the person’s family, not the man. This is all so exhausting!” With that, a few tears rolled down her cheeks.

As the drive wore on, other thoughts occurred.

WOMBAT COUPLE.

“Do squirrels marry? Doves and wombats do. Though I doubt
any species likes to be generalized about, and there are probably plenty of single doves and wombats who are quite happy with their lives. You’re male, aren’t you? I’ve always thought so.”

Rather clinical to try for a glimpse of a penis, but she did, she got just the right angle between his legs.

“Sorry. You know, when I was young, I called you
squills
.”

The squirrel jumped to the fore at this point, and made a sound not unlike a set of castanets. Its plume of a tail flickered rapidly back and forth. She felt the air displaced on her arm, which reminded her of adventuring in the night. She decided to listen to Ravel’s
Bolero
, slipping the CD into the portable player plugged into the cigarette lighter. She’d always loved the hypnotic piece, which starts with a lone flute and builds into a raucous throng of instruments.

“Squills, yes,” she said. “My grandmother used a fake British accent when she was out in public and called them squills. My mother hated that.”

All at once it felt wonderful to be out on the road, part of a convoy of trucks. She phoned in sick for work the next day, felt released. She remembered how excited Linus would get on car trips, pointing out the difference between a fuel tanker that was full and one that was empty. The empty ones bounced. There was another kind of truck she’d always liked, with a quilted rear door. Linus said those were refrigerated trucks. Her mother would get worked up about some kind of explosive hubcap on trucks that could blast off and penetrate passing cars, something she’d learned on an exposé on
60 Minutes
. She’d always yell at Linus to pass trucks in a hurry. Veblen still passed them quickly, wondering if one of the hubcaps would suddenly rocket into her car. Mostly she
remembered a kind of wonderful, drowsy feeling, being little in the backseat, allowed to sleep while they drove through the night. Everyone in the right place, strapped in, looking forward. No one acting out. The passenger years.

At last she came to the old Mission San Miguel, where she had seen many ground squirrels and intended to release this one. But no sooner had she pulled off the highway in the twilight and driven around to the area outside the mission and parked than she felt full of grief and tension. In her headlights she saw the rough, rutted ground where the squirrels burrowed, and realized at once that this squirrel was not a ground squirrel at all, but a tree squirrel, a whole different sort of squirrel entirely. “I can’t let you go here!” She gasped. “I’ve made a mistake. There might be a few tree squirrels around, but what if there aren’t?” Renewed by this logic, she backed up and drove away as quickly as she could.

She remembered her spot in the old crab apple where she retreated to sit and think, lining up her spine along the trunk, eyeing the horizon. She’d let her eyes water so the view was blurry, which gave certain qualities of the world neglected by clear eyesight the chance to come forth, such as the shocking beauty of color, and she remembered this with compassion for that silly young self, which had deserved to have her hand held.

“My mother would get out the binoculars and see me talking and thought it was a sign of childhood schizophrenia, so I had to start positioning myself at a certain angle to have some privacy. Or not move my lips. So I’m a good ventriloquist.”

She laughed, recalling the range of problems her mother thought she might have. “Like trichotillomania!” She wrinkled her nose remembering the trichotillomania period, when her
mother watched vigilantly to see if Veblen so much as touched her hair for an instant, ready to pounce and pronounce it a pathological crutch.

“Do you know what that is? It’s some kind of urge to pull out your hair. I never had that urge at all,” she added. “I bet you haven’t either. Your fur is your pride and joy. And it pads you and keeps you warm. So does hair.”

The squirrel shook, and fluffed up.

      13

T
HE
A
NIMAL
R
ULE

W
hile Veblen was on her way to Paso Robles with the squirrel, Paul and James Shalev were on their way to San Jose to attend the opening night of DeviceCON, the leading North American medical and pharmaceutical drug sector trade show. Hutmacher was a major sponsor, and Paul was booked to meet and greet for an hour as a “Key Innovator.”

“Heard about the attack,” Shalev mentioned.

The traffic was thick even in the carpool lane. “What attack?”

“You had a situation with some aggression down in the ward. Bruce Johnson had to intervene.”

Not wanting to lionize the male nurse Bruce Johnson or sound like a helpless wimp, Paul said, “No big deal. Things like that happen all the time.”

“Oh, sure,” said Shalev. “I’m sure Oliver Sacks has been attacked by a patient or two.”

“What are you trying to say?” Paul asked.

“Just that it can happen to the best,” Shalev said. Paul had to
slam on his brakes to avoid a Prius that had abruptly changed lanes. He suddenly flashed on what Veblen told him that Thorstein Veblen once said:
“No one travelling on a business trip would be missed if he failed to arrive.”

The two men fell into another silence. Paul was feeling uneasy about Veblen’s attitude toward the chicken Veronica, the beef
en croûte,
and the gift registry. And annoyed by her attitude toward the Sea Ray and any kind of material gain. Could it signify a deeper dissatisfaction? She even sounded pissed about the trial he’d arranged for her freaky mother. He couldn’t win! And why was she reading that hideously titled book,
Marriage: Dead or Alive
? Was that what a happy, excited woman read before her wedding?