The Portable Veblen (35 page)

“Dad!” she’d cried. “Stop!”

His body arched as he jammed his hands into his pockets.

“Please don’t go!” she begged.

He pulled things up from his pockets, loose change, Life Savers, receipts, finally producing the keys, which fell to the floor of the car. He hit his head on the steering wheel as he leaned forward to fish for them.

“Please, Dad!”

Why was he leaving?

Why was she calling him
Dad
?

He really did go. He drove away from the daughter he was trying to mend with. She had a long cry on the front steps until she felt drained and empty.

Now her mother said, “I don’t want you to find out Paul is mentally ill after a week,” diversifying her gripes.

“No, that wouldn’t be fun.”

“Is there any chance of waiting a little longer?”

“I don’t know. We’ll see.” She pressed on the gas, wanting to get home.

“Why? Is something wrong?”

“Nothing. I’m tired. I might know Paul better than you knew Rudge,” Veblen added, keeping her eyes fixed on the road.

“Yes. That’s because I love you and I’ve put my life into raising you, and therefore you are not finding it necessary to run into a man’s arms like I did. I hope.”

She had her own wounds, hadn’t she? She had her own reasons
to run, wouldn’t you say? But none could compare to her mother’s. “Fair enough.”

“I’m an utter failure, except for raising a beautiful daughter. That’s my one accomplishment in life.”

“You’re a great artist, Mom, and you had a good career for a while.”

“Please don’t patronize me. I know of what I speak.”

“Okay.”

Silence again.

“Veblen, you may not know it now, but marriage affects everything that happens to you. Your mate becomes the mirror in which you see yourself. If he doesn’t see you as a beautiful pearl, you’ll wither. Does he see you as a beautiful pearl?”

“Maybe I’m not a beautiful pearl.”

“You are! Don’t ever say that to me!”

“Okay, I’m a beautiful pearl.”

“He is not vindictive and insane?” asked her mother.

“I thought we were talking about Rudgear,” said Veblen, lowering her window a little to revive.

Her mother took a deep breath. “All right, then. So all I need to do is accept the fact that on the otherwise happiest day of my life, I have to see Rudgear Amundsen-Hovda and behave as if it’s just another day in the park. The man who emotionally battered me, and contributed nothing to your upbringing except for heartbreak and suffering. Yes. Let’s do it!”

“You knew he was shell-shocked in Vietnam when you married him.”

“I was too attracted to him to think clearly.”

“So you admit he’s had a hard life.”

“So have I. My mother bloodied my nose every day of my youth.”

Veblen cleared her throat. “I know your life was horrible. Your father was always away and your mother was a sociopath and nobody knew it. It was a childhood unbearable by all standards, even compared to fly-covered, starving children in Africa.”

“Are you ridiculing me?”

“No, I really mean it. To be isolated with a madwoman all your childhood must have been—hideous. Suffocating. Awful.”

“Must have been?” cried Melanie.

“Was!
Was!
”

“All right, then,” said her mother. “Have Rudgear come for your reasons.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“And who will give you away? I suppose you’ve asked Rudgear?”

“No,” said Veblen, “no, I was planning to ask someone else.”

“Oh. Linus?”

She hadn’t planned to mention this yet, but a rush of feeling for Paul, whom she missed now, and for her mother, propelled her onward, come what may.

“No, you.”

Her mother screeched, “Me? Why
me
?”

“Because—you’re the one.”

“Sweetie,” Melanie stammered. “That’s very unorthodox.”

“So what? Come on, you know we have a matriarchy going on here. Remember when we read Bachofen together?” Bachofen wrote
Mother Right,
which attempted to demonstrate that motherhood was at the center of all religions and societies and behavior from the beginning of human history.

“I get very nervous in front of people,” said her mother.

“But you could do it, couldn’t you?”

Her mother’s voice fell to a whisper. “I am fat and ugly.”

“Mom, I want you next to me. You’re the one who’s always been there for me, and I love you.”

“Oh, dear. I’m sorry I’m such a wreck.”

She was watching the traffic ahead of her. “We’ll both be wrecks together,” said Veblen, with small tears in her eyes.

“My pride . . . I can barely move . . . I’m as wide as a barn . . . I’ll fall over right in front of everybody. I won’t be able to let go of you.”

Veblen said, “Practice, Mom. You can do it.”

“I feel very stressed now.”

“I’d better go,” Veblen said. “We’ll talk more later.”

“I love you, sweetie.”

“I love you too.”

Veblen’s determination with her mother usually paid off in cases where Veblen was proving her love. In cases where Veblen tried to create distance, she’d been much less able.

“She’ll have a great time and later she’ll know it was right,” said Veblen to the squirrel. “She’ll be thrilled that I wanted her so badly. She’ll complain but she’ll do it.”

She looked at the squirrel, who, despite his misgivings about the wedding, knew a righteous act when he saw it.

Oh, to be out on the open road. Oh, to tell her what one squirrel’s life added up to!

He might choose the final fight with his wife, atop the old oak in Wobb, from which she cursed his name and pushed him off the weak end of the branch. And all the vitriol thereafter, when she
tried to ruin his career. But that was ugly stuff, and deep down he bore a loyalty to the woman he couldn’t forsake, no matter what she did.

He could describe his picaresque education and his work, or his special studies on numerous topics including the ethnopoetics of—her. Might seem a bit like cozying up. Best not.

He could talk about each and every one of his children, for they sparkled in his crown like jewels.

Abigu, Ataturk, Nan-bon, and Cleede were his first. Abigu and Cleede, artists now. Ataturk had a temper but with the proper nuts under control. Cleede was a wonderful mother with many children of her own. And then Devonian, Dwormuth, Dragwood, and Eleide—would she really want to know?

Devonian was a master carpenter. Married, nice family. Dwormuth was an intellectual, working on a dream book. Dragwood had a daughter with knee troubles and spent much time at her side.

Egon, Wauna, Dinse, and Dwee came during a cold winter that nearly killed them. Dinse was at loose ends, and Dwee was a firefighter. Wauna sorted acorns at a plant, but was a supervisor. Egon made carpets and had a beautiful wife and was a wonderful dad.

Sato, Finkie, and Forbush came next. Finkie and Forbush lived in an imaginary world of their own, and stood apart from the rest. Sato was married to a horrible man. Gaffy, Gozo, Gander, and Gree were still learning. Rather childish but affectionate. Gaffy had some singing talent. Hattie, Horti, Heino, and Ife were politically active, and Heino was interested in philosophy. Itti-ko, Ivory, Ion, Jellyboy, Jips, and Ringie sprang from an unusually large litter. They were all small and delicate, but they’d turned
into very interesting squirrels. Ivory and Jellyboy had an aptitude for speech. Calarak, Tanga, and Quipper were prone to outbursts and tears, and had very tight muscles. He loved them, of course. Zeonides, Latereen, Driver, still youths. Wollister, Viluk, Razzztak-hive, Vlee, Chupperwhupper, and Lou were single births, and perhaps that’s why they were extra clingy.

Though they tried to gather for big mash-up suppers on Sunday afternoons, it wasn’t always easy. Every family had its burdens. Sato lived with a sadistic blue jay, and Calarak danced at a striptease. That had been a tough one.

“But you love your family, what can you do,” said Veblen out loud, clearly understanding everything.

And that pleased him, she could see.

•   •   •

M
EANWHILE, THE DAY
was coming to an end, and the sun had gone down behind the coastal mountains. Traffic wore its lights. Field workers were piling into open trucks that hauled their Porta Potties behind them.

Squirrels were thinking about the night ahead, and how to avoid owls.

One squirrel was inside a car, returning to Tall Tree, California.

She knew where to take him. Before turning onto Tasso Street, she parked alongside the creek bed, and toted the cage out in the dark. Down the bank she skied on dry leaves, and beside the rivulet nestled the cage on the ground. It had been a long day.

“I’m so sorry to drag you all that way in such ignominious fashion. But here you are. And don’t forget where I live! Come by again sometime. If necessary, we’ll do this all over again!”

Paul could say what he wanted. This squirrel had no intention of burning down the house.

A breeze unsettled the trees, and a nightingale laughed. Crunching and gnawing could be heard in nearby shrubs. The night animals were out and about. The smell of rotting leaves drifted up from beneath her shoes, and she brushed a papery moth from her cheek. A rhyme formed in her head:

The Flying squirrel flies, and the Irksome squirrel irks.

The Spinning squirrel spins and the Smirking squirrel smirks.

The Crapulous craps and the Lurking lurks;

But when the Talking squirrel talks, none but a Listening Human works.

Veblen gasped. “A listening human, eh? A rare variation on the Q chromosome? About .0000000000000001 of the population, you say?”

She attempted to picture all those zeros in her head, recognizing this was about one in eight billion.

“That’s the whole population of the world! Of people, of course. Are you saying I might be the only person, on earth, who listens?”

If that wasn’t a nod, she hardly knew what was.

“Well.”

She made no move to go; she felt like sleeping on the bank.

“Here we are, then.”

The squirrel was quiet in the cage. She marveled that he wasn’t rattling about in a petulant frenzy.

“We hit it off, didn’t we?”

And she opened the trap door.

The squirrel appeared in the moonlight, standing before her. A beetle was crawling across her hand before she thought about time again. And the squirrel ran down to the ribbon of flowing water, and drank. She saw it scooping water into its hands, washing its face, squeezing water from its tail. It was a beautiful night, all silver on the branches and leaves of the tall trees around her, and the ground glimmering as well. “I think a person ought to go sit outside every night of their life. How can it be good for us to miss this? We stay all closed up in our houses with lightbulbs. This is so beautiful!” she said to herself. She dug her hands into the mulch around her, and kept watch on the squirrel, who continued to cool himself in the creek, flicking his tail like a magnificent plume. “Yet you wish to sleep in the attic,” she teased the squirrel. “When you could be out here under the beautiful moon.” She thought of hawks and owls then, coming down with their hungry talons, and said, “It’s nice to sleep where owls and hawks aren’t flying past, though. That’s the truth.” For hours you could not trust the world to take care of you, when you closed your eyes. Every creature knew it.

She saw two small figures coming down to the creek, soon nose to nose with her squirrel, three tails now twitching together, some quiet conversation between them. He had friends, family here. She had done the right thing!

“Good night,” she called.

•   •   •

—
D
AD, YOU ALL RIGHT?
Did they cut open your brain and put electrodes on it and fill your skull with dyes?

—Not this time. I was simply on a road trip with a friend.

•   •   •

S
HE WENT HOME
and started to sing.
“I’ve just seen a face . . . /He’s just the squill for me / lalalalalala.’”
And laughed at herself. It was madness born of a surplus of feeling, that’s all. As a girl, visiting a farm on a school trip, Veblen fed hardened corncobs to a crowd of gnashing hogs, and felt the terror of the tug of their mouths. She saw a calf being born, watched it licked by its mother into standing, and heard the busy cluck of chickens extruding their eggs. She survived a goose peck to the leg and combed the glorious mane of a mare. Indeed, the day seemed to portend a future so full of riches, on the school bus coming back she found herself bawling her eyes out. “I like that farm
so much,
” she said, surprising her teacher, who only wanted to comfort her for something simple, like an earache, or a scraped knee.

      17

O
FFENSE
I
S
M
ANDATORY

T
he clock said 1:30
A.M
., and light streamed in from the hall. All at once Veblen realized Paul was there, kneeling over her, rolling her in bed like a log.

“Who did you go with!” He gasped, pungent with grape tannins. “Who were you with!”

“Paul?”

“Why didn’t you call when you got home?”

“Stop it, I’m awake.”

She sat up and rubbed her eyes and ran her hands through her hair, pushing it out of her face. Sipped water from the glass by the bed.

“I called you a bunch,” she said. “You never answered.”

His voice sank with him to the floor, as if he were going down with a heavy weight around his neck. “You’re my best friend, Veb, my moral compass.”

“I’m not that great.”

“I love you, and everything about you, and if I can make you happy, I’ll be the happiest person in the world.”

“What’s wrong?” She’d never seen him like this.

He rubbed his face roughly. Dried leaves drifted from the tangled mane of his hair, as if he’d been hiding in a tree. Brown redwood needles were sticking into the back of his shirt. There was a small gash over his left eye. “You were talking to someone—about our wedding,” he said thickly. “You—” He could barely bring out the words. “Fuck! How could this happen! You told him—you said he was
handsome
.”