Expensive People (21 page)

And another mysterious thing: Father began taking me to foreign movies. Films. We sat through a three-hour technicolor extravaganza of fantasies, enormous idealized bodies of males and females, and though I liked the splash of color well enough I didn't have any idea what was happening. And we saw a peculiar black-and-white film in which a couple pursue a disappeared girl over an island and a mainland, for hours, days, weeks, but fail to find her, and so it went. Despite my boredom I remember being struck by a sense of gritty, relentless futility in that movie, precisely the same futility I myself lived in. Afterward Father said, “Antonioni captures perfectly the malaise of the modern world, don't you think?”

“Huh?”

“His searching people, his ruins, his sand, his … well, you know, all the gadgets and stuff. Don't you think he captures it?”

“I guess so,” I said. I was a little worried because one of the rambling, cheerful bachelors seemed to be changing.

Even his healthy outrage seemed to be weakening. When Florence tsk-tsked about the current newspaper drama—a girl of eleven abducted by a madman who was finally shot down by police—Father did not respond as usual with a hearty yelp of hatred, saying that it was the worst thing this state had ever done to revoke the death penalty; he seemed hardly to have heard. “Don't know what the world's coming to,” Florence muttered, making our breakfast, and Father, who was glancing through the
Wall Street Journal on
one side of his plate and the
Partisan Review
on the other, did no more than agree vaguely as he chewed his toast.

At last he explained everything. He came home early one day and shortly afterward a man in a run-down truck brought Father a
FOR SALE INQUIRE WITHIN
sign for the front lawn. We were moving again!

“We'll see how crazy I am to try selling it myself. We'll see.” Father chuckled.

He had Florence clean the house inch by inch, and install flowers on the foyer table, the dining-room table, and the marble-topped table in the living room. Florence wore a dainty apron and a lace cap, and I was dressed in my Johns Behemoth blazer, my hair slicked down onto my forehead so that I looked like an English public-school boy, or someone's idea of one. I sat idly in the den, at the grand piano, and when would-be buyers were shown through the house I glanced at them, nodded stiffly, and turned back to my music. Father had other tricks too. He did not seem to be selling anything. He stressed the tight market, the difficulty of attaining a mortgage unless (and here his eyes would move kindly but realistically to the visitor's face) the borrower was quite well-off. And the maintenance of a house like this was high, he said, and mentioned prices that were absurdly low. “You will want the lawn serviced, of course; I think that's sixty a month.” Or “The man with the little snowplow charges twenty dollars a winter to clear the walk.”

And did it work? Of course. The house was sold in the first week for $88,000, a fine profit. He sold it to a family named Body who were moving up from Cleveland; the man was in advertising and needed a good-looking house. The wife hesitated over the circle driveway, thinking that it was “almost too much,” but in the end she gave in; all women like things that are almost too much.

Moving did not upset me. Instead it made me feel slower than ever, bogged down, helpless. I sat around and watched the movers pack lamps and dishes, stuffing in newspapers skillfully and endlessly. The movers were competent men. I thought dreamily that they might pick me up and stuff me in one of the boxes, lined with newspaper, and ship me off to the new house. Florence was out in the kitchen, helping with the good china. She had never met Nada but she tsk-ed and clucked over the beautiful china and kept saying that she “would not be responsible” for what happened.

Didn't she know that no one was ever responsible for anything?

One by one things were packed up and packed off. There went
Nada's table, there went the chair Father called “his” though he never sat in it. From upstairs came a procession of things that should have looked familiar—”my” own furniture. “My” things. I watched them with interest. Everything was so friendly. We owned all these things. They did not cause us pain and they had hardly cost us any money. Up from the basement came another procession of “our” things—washing machine, dryer, lawn furniture, a glass-topped table with elegant curlicues of iron, “my” old bow-and-arrow set, “my” badminton set, boxes and boxes of nameless things that must have belonged to us. Bundles and cartons. Suitcases that had been packed for the last move and had not yet been unpacked. Were we saying good-by to Nada in this sneaky way?

Florence said, “Richard, why are you crying?”

“I'm not crying,” I said.

I was watching the big orange moving van drive away. It drove slowly up Burning Bush Way and took off in the direction of “our” new home, which Father had already bought. Another home, another town. My bones creaked and got me to my feet. I had to get ready because Father was coming home soon and we could start off in the car for our new life. Father had been invited by a certain highly successful firm, BWK, to take over one of their divisions. He explained his new job to me, but I hadn't listened carefully enough. I was having difficulty hearing, or maybe it was difficulty seeing. I couldn't match the sounds of words with the funny movements made by the speaker's lips. Even when Florence talked there was something odd. Her words came at me faster than her lips seemed able to shape them. A hodgepodge of sounds and ringing noises buzzed in my brain. I felt as if I were asleep even when I was awake, and because I was asleep everything was a dream and anything could happen.

Oh, we are so strangely matched with our dreams! We are so strangely suited to them, no matter how obscene or hilarious they are, and no matter how angrily we deny them. Yes, we always deny them. Looking back on Fernwood, now, as I write this memoir, I can see that Fernwood itself was a dream, and everyone in it dreaming the dream; all in conjunction, happy, so long as no one woke up. If one sleeper wakened, everything would have been stretched and jerked out of focus, and so … the end of Fernwood, the end of Western civilization! One would as soon trust Charles Spoon (that immensely talented designer
of automobiles now applying to design another kind of weapon) with the life and death of Western civilization as one would trust people like Nada and myself with dreaming the good happy dream of Fern-wood. We were failures. And so … were we saying good-by to Nada, sneaking off? Were Father and I packing up the stuff of our dream and taking it to another setting, where it could flourish safely away from all memories of that woman who kept waking and disturbing everyone?

Because—and this is the only truth I know about my mother, a most sorry truth—she wanted only to live but she didn't know how, that was why she made a mess. Messes are made by people who want but don't know what they want, let alone how to get it. And all the messes she made!

Father came, there were good-bys with Florence (three separate ones, awkward and moving), there was an exchange of money, the keys were dropped off at an attorney's office, I was entrusted with the road map, which looked like the plan for the intestines of a giant insect, and off we drove into the sunset. Father drove well, just like Mr. Hofstadter. He did not look back. I did not look back. But I could see in my mind's eye the placid winding streets (ways, lanes, drives) of Fernwood leading back farther and farther into the dimness of the past I had already spent here, from January to April of an uneventful year for Fernwood but a year to end all other years in my life.

I said to Father, “Are you going to write her and let her know where we're going?”

Father chuckled and said, “Tend to the road map, Buster. You're the navigator for this run.”

Two hours later, lonely for companionship, I said, “What kind of work will you be doing now, Father?”

“Cut out that Father business, I'm your Dad. Daddy,” he said cheerfully. “It's a line of work you'd be interested in yourself, Son. Top-security business, of course. Our new product is something that … well, I can't explain to you in any detail (not that I think you're a Red spy, Kid!) but I can say generally that it has the appearance of our regular product, which has a certain superficial resemblance to the product of my former firm, a platinum-covered wire, but there are immense differences! A most intricate thing indeed. Our research team has been working for years to perfect a certain device that… well, has
immense value in determining the security of America. Do you understand?”

My interest rose. “Is it a bomb then?”

“A bomb?” He laughed. “Look, Kid, maybe and maybe not. On the day you get cleared I'll tell you. Okay?”

“Do you think I'll get cleared too?”

“If you keep your nose clean. If your mother keeps her nose clean.”

“What?”

“Kid, I almost lost my top clearance because of your mother. But no more of that. Forget it.”

“What about Nada?”

“Forget it, Kid,” he said.

He was jolly and restrained, like a magician with birds tickling him inside his clothes.

And so we drove on into the night and did not stop, for my father (and probably yours too) likes to drive straight through. “Drove straight through,” he'll say modestly when he reaches his destination. “Straight through” from Fernwood to our new town, which was called “Cedar Grove.”

“That name sounds kind of familiar,” I said.

“Ha, you're a riot, Kid! You know very well that we lived in Cedar Grove once before.”

“Is that right?”

“Ha, ha! I think you were about four or five. Yes, Cedar Grove is a fine place and we're headed for a fine new life because, you see, Dickie-boy I have got a rather pleasant financial reward in connection with my switching to BWK. But of that no more need be said.” And he wouldn't say any more either, because he was a little embarrassed over his success. He liked to talk about other men's successes and bring in his own by implication; he was modest, modest. So he chattered on about his new product, and the tie-in with the government, and the cultural advantages of Cedar Grove.

There was something boyish and giddy in his talk. He frightened me. But he was not frightening—there was nothing frightening there, it was his cheerfulness itself that terrified. I had the idea that I was trapped in this car with someone who wanted to destroy me, not by crashing the car or turning to me but just by talking, chatting, confiding,
laughing, chuckling, patting my skull. He loved me. It was clear that he loved me and I loved him. Why was I so afraid of him?

I have on one hand this agreeable, well-appointed father, and on the other hand my morbid and obviously unnatural fear of him. I am unable to justify one by the other. They remain forever apart, and if I could get them together by telling you the tale of my dog Spark I'd do that, but when I tell that tale I either laugh miserably or cry hilariously.

I think, while Father speeds into the domestic American darkness, toward Cedar Grove, I will tell you the tale of my dog Spark after all.

When I was very little Father and Nada gave me a nice Christmas present: a little dog named “Spark.” Spark was a dachshund, which word was pronounced not “dash-hound,” as the maid and the lawn men pronounced it, but in a fast, angry, wheezing way, like a sneeze. Father and Nada always said it correctly, and so did their friends. Spark did not know he was a dachshund, but his great sorrowful eyes seemed to indicate some misery or humiliation.

“Isn't it a lovely doggie?” Nada cried.

She hugged Spark and me together, entwining her arms about both of us. In the background, sketch in a Negro maid smiling maternally, with what in hand (for she must be busy)? Oh, a rag, a bottle of Anglo-Saxon Furniture Polish. What kind of day? Misty, mild; spring. Nada dressed in a beautiful new suit, new gloves and purse in hand, ready to press the button and raise the garage door and drive off, destination unknown. Yes, I can see her there. In a minute she will leave.

Happy days are all one big blur of confusion, but so are unhappy days; in my sordid life, all days were blurs of confusion. But this was a happy day and blurred as usual with my shouts of joy and Spark's little whimpers and his fuzzy, downy stomach (more downy than the soft blond down on Nada's arms) and his caramel-candy-colored coat. He was delicious enough to eat! I hugged Spark in my clumsy arms and helped him wave good-by to Nada, who drove out and away, and I didn't turn aside from his wet leaping tongue.

And then … Not a minute later there was an aqua laundry truck.

In the driveway from out of nowhere, and a man with a cap on his head looking down, cigar in hand. Yelps, whimpers. The maid came running behind me and screamed. Then she came running back and grabbed my arm and said, “Richard, you better get inside here fast,” and I tried to get away to see where Spark had gotten to, but she took me back to the Family Room and turned on the television and that was that. I asked her for Spark and she said, “He's restin',” and turned the television volume up higher.

Nada came, and Father came. They looked at me from the doorway of the Family Room. Father had his arm around Nada's shoulders. They were saying something and their faces were sad, but though they were looking at me I could tell I wasn't supposed to hear them so I didn't hear anything. I was not a spy in those days.

We went out for a nice dinner, and I said, “Where's Spark?” and Father said cheerfully, “Spark had to go to the doctor. You know, like you did. Dr. Pratt.”

“How come?”

“Spark needs his measles shot.”

The next day when I woke up there was no Spark to be scolded at for making a mess in the kitchen, or rolling around whimpering on the floor. Nada stayed home. She made fudge, but it was too salty so I had to eat it all myself. At noon Father's car drove in, and I looked close and saw that Father was in it, and he jumped out of the car with a big happy hello for us, and along with him was Spark.

“Back safe and sound from the doctor—got his shots and he's set for life,” Father said.