The Unknown Knowns (3 page)

That morning I spent writing, or really just taking notes and making pencil sketches in my binder. For a while I fell asleep on the couch. When I woke up it was Jean's imprint on the corduroy upholstery that I felt, not my own. Her residual body heat was trapped somewhere deep in the cushions, and I tried with mind
magnetism to extract it, draw it into myself. I know everyone can understand this, because we've all been in love before. But it didn't work, so I was forced to lie there feeling her warmth from an upholstered distance.

I slept again and this time I dreamed about being trapped under an endless sheet of polar ice. Above me I could see the sun, weak and blobby like the beam of a flashlight through the wall of a pup tent. I looked for a hole or some slushy area compromised by algae, but there was no escape.

When I woke up the third time it was well after noon. My hair was still ratty with chlorine, so I showered and even took the time to use a cream rinse. I made an egg sandwich and stared at the stainless-steel door of our dishwasher while I ate. By the time I realized that there was egg yolk in my hair, it was already dry. While I was sponging my sideburns it occurred to me that the day was slipping away. I had to get something done. So I drove out to the storage plaza, stopping at the Hot Mart on the way for a coffee and a chocolaty Paycheck bar.

Stor-Mor is just past the airport, several acres of identical orange-and-white corrugated buildings inside a high security fence. When I signed my contract two years earlier, they gave me a four-digit pin number for the front gate, but I forgot it. And anyway you can punch in any four digits and the hydraulic gate opens. I located my unit, easing the Corolla close to the entrance. The combination to my padlock was 19L, 25R, 3L. I nailed it on the first try. (The agents would famously use a bolt cutter; maybe you saw the footage.) The garage door shrieked as I clean-jerked it open, then I stood back to let the hard Colorado daylight color my secret library.

The storage unit was my only selfish space on earth. Until
they got that warrant and hauled everything in for state's evidence, no one else had ever been allowed inside. Not even Corey at the hotel had clearance to see it, and certainly not Jean. She would soon prove that she couldn't be trusted around mint-condition comics.

I slipped on my white gloves and stepped inside. At the center of the room stood a lopsided globe of Earth-Two, the Golden Age planet of DC Comics. This was a science fair project of mine, aged twelve, that took some two weeks to complete. Looking back, I see it as quite possibly my first curatorial effort, the precursor to the Museum of the Aquatic Ape. I did a Mercator projection and some careful research to map the many nations and kingdoms and then pasted all this onto a papier-mâché ball.

Jean never got to see any of this. She would have laughed. I invite her to laugh now as loudly as she wants. Let everyone laugh at my private world. Who cares? I have no secrets anymore. The newspapers have made sure of that, and the subcommittee is telling the world all it wants to know about Jim Rath, prisoner, pariah, domestic terrorist.

The walls of the storage unit were arrayed floor to ceiling with acid-free archival boxes. These I had alphabetized clockwise around the perimeter of the room using gummed labels and a Sharpie.

In the extreme upper left corner you would have found my second most valuable item on earth,
Action Comics
No. 99 (the one with Trick-Shot Shultz using Superman's forehead as a golf tee; F; $445). In the same box I kept the premiere issue of
Atoman
(featuring Wild Bill Hickok; VG; $280). Then there was
The Beyond
No. 17 (“You have called us forth by playing the Lyre of Doom! We are ready to do your evil bidding, master!”; NM!!!; $330).

Nearby, I kept one of the most trenchant meditations on male insecurity ever. This was
The Cat
No. 4 (“All my life, humans have hurt me—hounded me! Today, all mankind will fall—beneath the hooves of the Man-Bull!”; VG; only worth $5, but to me it's priceless).

Dead ahead, midway up the shelves, was a complete series of
Mr. District Attorney,
including the prescient issue No. 5 (“Exposing the cruelest racket in the world—‘The Counterfeit Medicine Mob!'”; G; $60). Next to that was
Nyoka the Jungle Girl
No. 27 (NM; $280). Skip a few boxes, and you'd find
Plastic Man
No. 39 (VG; $136). “Who dares follow Plastic Man down the stairway to madness?” I can't tell you how many times I answered that question in the affirmative.

I had a real oddity from 1952. The virulently anti-McCarthyite issue of
Shock SuspenStories
(Jingoistic he-man says: “Give it to him, the dirty Red!”; Modern woman says: “Stop it! Please! What you're doing is wrong! Act like Americans!”; VG; $205). My collection also included several well-preserved issues of
Rulah, Jungle Goddess
. Why so many comics about feral women? Feel free to write your own report on this topic and e-mail it to the Pentagon.

I'll wrap up our tour on the bottom shelf, where you'd find one of my most prized possessions shielded from insidious forces and mildew in a doubled plastic sleeve.
Wonder Woman
No. 26 (“The Golden Women and the White Star!”; G; $260). If this had been Superman, the price would be double. But that's the Neanderthal world of comics collecting for you! You should see the meatheads who do the appraising.

I tugged a length of kite string to snap on the overhead bulb and then pulled down the garage door behind me. My task was
secret—I was looking for the so-called lost issue of
Namora
(No. 4, 1948). Suppressed by the Comics Council, halted by the publisher, this was one of only five copies extant on our planet, or any other planet that I know of. Now, thanks to your government trying to protect our vital interests, there are only four. Taking out insurgents one rare, collectible comic at a time!

Namora, if you don't know, was the cousin of Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner. Like Namor, she was fathered by a land dweller but raised in Atlantis, where she joined the ruling elite. In the late forties they handed Namora her own series, but it was discontinued under suspicious circumstances after only three issues.

I removed the apocryphal issue No. 4 from its plastic sleeve and laid it out on my felt desktop, using long surgical tweezers to turn the pages. It looked so frail, the images so quaint, with their one-piece bathing suits and USO hairdos. Who would ever consider this a threat to American values? What could be so dangerous about a half-aquatic heroine with shapely legs and somewhat libertarian ideals? Historians will tell you she was gagged for her overt feminist themes, and for the “unequivocal depictions of Sapphic romance.” And it's true, issue No. 4 describes a feminist coup in her undersea birthplace, Maritanus. Under the mutinous leadership of Namora herself, all the women depart to establish their own colony deep in the Sea of Japan. There they form a psychic alliance with the Amazons to battle a school of marauding bull sharks. At the end we see one cell depicting subaquatic homosocial hand-holding. Big deal.

It was my mother who acquired this relic for my collection. The occasion was my eighth birthday, and it probably cost her plenty. On an assistant professor's salary this was a huge sacrifice, one that I have never forgotten.

I'd come all the way out here to Stor-Mor because I couldn't remember an important detail from this issue. How did Namora and her rebel band get from Maritanus to the Sea of Japan? I found the answer on page 24, a caravan of blue whales with saddles strapped to their humps, those little huts you see on the backs of camels in movies about Cleopatra. This was something I could definitely use in a diorama.

We're talking now about my physical storage unit. But of course I had another unit. It was padlocked in the section of the brain where we keep our hopes. Based on certain pressures I feel when going there, I have determined that it resides somewhere in the rear left of the skull. This is where I built my conceptual dioramas and printed the imaginary white placards to hot-glue on the walls beside them. This was the Museum of the Aquatic Ape of the Mind, behind its own shrieking garage door, corrugated orange and white, no secret password to enter, no archival boxes for the agents to raid, no voice-mail messages for some congressman to broadcast in front of a whole chamber of dignitaries.

I sat down and felt the pressure of tears mounting in my sockets, felt the heaviness in the rear left of my skull, and with these sensations came a wave of sadness.

 

By the time I got home, Jean was already back from the office. She works in organization management for a corporate development firm. When you're dealing with Complexity Theory and critical thinking all day, it can get pretty stressful. You'd be surprised how much resistance there is when you offer alternatives to command-and-control leadership methods. So I couldn't blame Jean if she brought her work home with her sometimes.

I lingered at the door, car keys and laser-pointer springing from hand to hand. From there I could see her on all fours in the full bath, rummaging through the cabinet under the sink.

“I'm back!” I shouted cheerfully but maybe not loud enough.

“Where did you put my goddamn razor?” said Jean. “Have you been using it again?”

“I went out to do some archival research,” I said. “For the Museum.”

“Why can't you shave your armpits with your own razor?” she said. And then to herself: “What's
wrong
with him?” Her head was under the sink. I could tell by the muffled quality of her voice.

“So—did you eat yet?” I fired the laser in the direction of the bathroom, drawing the shape of a heart on her substantial behind. “Hon?”

“If you don't stop with that thing, I'm going to have my brother break your fingers.”

“Okay! I was thinking burritos.”

I'd learned from experience that the best way to manage Jean's bad weather was with a steady outpouring of sunshine. Stay positive, Jim. Stay up. Let her know she's safe. Of course that tactic failed miserably in the end; nothing could keep the storm front of heartbreak at bay forever.

Even as I sit here on the deck of the
Endurance,
on this dismal, drippy night, I feel the muscle reflex at the corners of my mouth that signals happiness. My lawyer congratulates me when I smile. “Keep it up, Jimmy,” he says. “It helps.” This is the Fat Man, my court-appointed counsel, with his steady intake of Diet Pepsi. I am a cheerful person by nature, but the more I think about where that's gotten me, the more I want to repudiate
optimism in all its forms. I can't think of a lot of compelling reasons to smile. But look here: at the corners of my mouth. They point in the direction of optimism. Keep smiling, I say. Keep shining.

My wife and I spent the rest of that evening in separate states of engagement. Jean watched a depressing show about child prostitution on public television and ate a microwave burrito. I ate a microwave burrito standing at the kitchen island, watching Jean.

“When do you plan to stop staring at me?” she said finally.

“Jean, is this something we should talk about?” I said. I wasn't staring. “Talking might be a good idea. If it's the Museum that's bothering you, I can put that aside for a while.” This was all said in the spirit of diplomacy; but I couldn't put the Museum aside—not for a while, not for a day. I was trying to be conciliatory, to the point of sugarcoating destiny, never a good idea.

Jean put the remainder of her burrito on the coffee table, perilously close to my autographed copy of Elaine Morgan's
The Descent of Woman
. I worried about bean seepage but didn't say anything. She considered me with paper-dry eyes.

“I don't even know what museum you're talking about, Jim. I don't even know—”

“The Museum of the Aquatic Ape,” I volunteered.

“—what this museum is. It doesn't exist in the reality of our life. The whole Aquaman thing, I mean it was cute for a while, but honestly.”

I surprised her by smiling. “This is good,” I said.

“Look, Jim.” She stood and moved close beside me. “This inner life of yours, I always liked that.”

“We're talking. It's a development.”

“I used to get a real kick out of your inner life. It was one of the things I liked about you.”

“Liked.”
My smile vanished when I realized we were in the past tense.

“Yes,” she said. “Now I just want things to be real.”

“Liked?”

“You can go out to Stor-Mor and play with your models, but it's got to be a hobby. Do you understand? I'm not just talking for me, because the next woman you meet—”

“
Next woman?”
At this stage I think I was yelling.

“—the next woman is going to say the same thing. Jim, you don't even know how to swim.”

“I'm going to stand here until you take that back.”

“About swimming?”

“The other thing. The next woman. Which is pure fantasy. I'm not going to sit down or move or blink until you take it back.”

She turned off the TV, bundled up the remains of her dinner, and dropped it in the kitchen trash.

“I'm serious,” I said, trying not to move my lips, trying not to move anything. “I want to be adult about this, but I'm not moving.” She set the timer on the coffeemaker for 7:00 a.m. and went to the bedroom, closing the door behind her. “Not moving until you take it back!”

 

Jean returned forty-five minutes later, just as I suspected she would. She found me, true to my word, standing completely motionless in the dim kitchenette.

“You have to move sometime, jerk.” She pushed my shoulder and gave me a laughing look, as if we were complicit in some kind
of comedy skit. I recognized what she was doing. She was giving me the opportunity to soften my stance, to acquiesce. But this was not an offer I could permit myself to take.