Some Other Town (6 page)

Which is why it was such a surprise when it happened. Ben's disappearance, I mean.

He bought the geese, a goose and a gander, from a neighbor. He does not intend to eat them. He wants them for company, and also because there is the stand of pines by the back door. Under the trees it is cool and feels always a little like rain. It is a place he thought geese would like. So he built a big pen out under the pines and put the two geese inside it.

And now every day, he climbs over the fence and into the pen along with them. It is an idea he had. For an hour each late afternoon he squats low to the ground, holds out a hand, and talks quietly to his geese. Tells them about how it is these days. How he is getting to know his students, how he likes the studio where they paint. Likes the house and farm as well. Likes it in general here.

These are the things he says under the pines to his geese. You have to do this with geese, he believes. And if you go every day and sit in their pen and talk calmly to them, after a while they get used to you. They trust you and like you and then you can take down the pen. They won't fly away.

Geese will stay loyal for life, he'd heard, once they get the chance to know you.

Ben's disappearance? Well now, there is the real matter at hand. Enough of paste-up, plateaus. Enough of the editors all back in their suites, finishing their morning's hard work. Enough, for that matter, of work at all and also of the sanatorium. Time here instead for Ben Adams.

I sit at my light table twirling my ink pen, considering. Ben Adams, I think. Ben and his curious vanishing. They are topics I keep returning to. Although, to be clear, I should add that Ben is not in fact my first boyfriend, or the first one that I've lost. When I was a graduate School of Art star, I had an excess of them, many just passing through. I've grown accustomed to boyfriends' habits. Still, the sudden, silent way Ben Adams took off has me, I must say, thrown. Despite that it's now been over three months, still I am figuring it out. Wondering, that is. Worrying too. Or sometimes, well mostly, just remembering.

The fact is, I suppose, it was easy for Ben just to slip out of sight. With the exception of Mrs. Eberline, who was onto us I would guess from the start, no one in town much knew about Ben or that he and I were a couple. It was a tacit decision we came to, for reasons that will become clear. A kind of silent oath, in fact, to tell no one about each other. And so Ben Adams and I just kept to ourselves. We were what you could call secret lovers, although it's important to note we ourselves never saw it that way. Nor did we agree on what it was then we were, which was an issue between us, admittedly. Still, definitions apart, we were happy.

He is, as I've said, a good man, Ben Adams, though even before
vanishing, elusive. A surprising man, not always the same. Strong but loose-limbed in a comfortable sort of way, generous but iron-willed. Now curious, now subdued, now here, now away. Young and old all at one time.

In years, the fact is Ben is older. Well, older than I by sixteen years. It does give him a natural advantage, this extra time he has had in the world. It's allowed him to do some figuring out. How politics works, for example, why it is that people care. How life itself works, or some of it, how it has an odd way of turning on you, that it is usually neither all nor only. Ben will say things like that sometimes. And while I do not understand always just what he means, I know I have something to learn from him.

But then there is yet another Ben. The one that without any warning can turn inexplicably sad. Which may not be actual unhappiness at all, perhaps more just something like age. Or reflection. Or some natural list toward longing. But whatever the cause, the fact remains, Ben Adams is a man who yearns. The issue here being that a man who yearns, compared with someone more jolly, more festive and generally chipper—a wistful man is an obligation, one you cannot easily walk out on.

Which is an interesting point now, I think, considering Ben is the one who's walked out.

I put down my pen and give this some thought. Unless of course, I think, he has not. Walked out, I mean. By choice. I take a deep breath, sit straighter. And I remember again Mrs. E's vision of Ben and against my will, start to wonder. What if Mrs. Eberline had it right? That there's been some sort of foul play. Is that why Ben hasn't called?

So I sit at my light table and I consider this too. That Ben is somehow in trouble. It's a reach, I know, but still. And after more thought, here is what finally occurs to me. Whether or not Ben really is missing—that is, now with the possibility raised—the fact remains that he is no longer here. So then, shouldn't someone try to find out where he's gone? Ask: Ben, are you all right? Check in as she might not have before.

And well, yes, shouldn't that someone be me?

For a moment I feel very clear. And I know for once I could be on the right track. It would seem that way, anyway, wouldn't it? I need to find Ben. Mrs. E says she's seen him in trouble. How could I now not check up on him?

It is a good thought, all right, I think. Albeit one that doesn't last long. Because I remember then of course about Mrs. E, that she and her visions are crazy, to believe them would be crazy as well. And I pick up my pen and start twirling again, momentarily back to the beginning.

Until, despite my remarkably good intention just now, a new thought begins to form. In fact two thoughts come at once. And I know then it's no longer my better self thinking, because what occurs to me is this: Maybe it does not in fact matter so much if Mrs. Eberline is mad or her vision of Ben is true. Maybe something else is at play. Maybe looked at now in a different light, what Mrs. E saw is an opportunity. My opportunity. An excuse to see Ben again.

I consider this new possibility. And although I know it is not my finest hour, I feel something inside me leap. Yes, of course, I should be the one now to go and find Ben. To make sure that he isn't in danger, to rescue him on the off chance he is.

And giving up then on pure altruism, I opt straight for brazen self-interest. Yes, I think, yes. A rescue here is in order. I will go save Ben, and once I know he's all right—since it would be rude just to turn and leave—I'll stay for a while, have a talk. Explain what I've been thinking since winter. Ben will say whatever he's been thinking too. We'll concede our disagreement from before. We'll see where we both had it wrong and both feel the better for it. And with luck then, there you will have it, our chance at a second chance.

What do you know, a rescue could just work out for us. Maybe it's not too late. Maybe we'll end up all right. Isn't that how rescue goes?

And well, I think, this changes everything, doesn't it? All previous bets now are off.

Although a clarification here, before anyone goes any further or gets the wrong impression. By second chance I do not actually mean the kind that the lovesick, well mostly the discarded, dwell on. I do not mean I am hoping to get back together with Ben. I don't know if I'd want to return to all that. There were problems with Ben, as I've said, and the fact is I just do not know about him. I have never really known about Ben.

Which is a funny thing about boyfriends, I've noticed. They too often don't know about you and jump to unwarranted conclusions. That for instance it was love, a mate you were after, when you really just needed someone to talk to.

No, I think by second chance, I mean I just want to know things with Ben and me are all right. That Ben is all right. There's been no real harm done here.

Again he climbs into the pen. There is more he wants to say.

Hoping for grain, the geese move in.

He takes a seat. So it's like this, he tells them. After all these years, he's come back. Here, where he had once been a student. Back to this town, the university. Back to where it began, where all of it once was possible. The painting, the light, that miraculous light, the fevered and urgent days. He has come back for them, yes, those days.

The geese stand nearby, watching.

Right, he tells them, smiles. That's right—and for the nights too. He's come back for those nights at the Hogshead. The cold beer, the pool, the old green shade. And the others like him at the bar, reeking of linseed, high.

All of them friends, he tells the geese. We were all of us friends then, good friends. Artists as well, graduate-student artists and friends. Michael, who built things, boxes within boxes, working from outside in. Jean, who filled canvas with tangled red roots and signed them “jean, jean the beet queen.” Charley, who etched tortuous faces in stone, then backed over the plates with his truck. Artists, yes artists. They were all of them artists then.

The geese drop their heads, peck the ground.

And some of them lovers, that too, he says. Ones he cannot now name, though he still sometimes thinks of the nights with them, their fine long-limbed bodies, the musk of their skin. Maybe he's come back for them.

He falls silent.

The geese look up.

Or Ellen. Or maybe for Ellen.

Turning their heads, the geese study him.

Right, he says. Right. Truth is, maybe he's come back just for Ellen. For where they first met, for the house they first shared that winter.

The geese stand waiting.

He shakes his head, smiles. He has no more to tell. “You would have liked Ellen,” he says.

He stands. Turns to leave. Turns back.

Truth is—

And shrugging, turning again for the fence—Truth is he has just come back, that's all. He had nowhere else to go.

But first, before rescue, a little more still about Ben and me. It's important before rushing to save, I believe, to understand just what is at stake. In this case, for instance, Ben and me. That is to say our coupling.

Which I should explain was indeed a strange thing and also against several odds. You could say it was unlikely our even meeting at all, given Ben's ways and mine. That is, ever since finding my house here on Mott, I've been inclined just to sit home alone a lot, while Ben himself is in town just this one year, staying mostly out in the country. We could have easily lived within miles of each other
never knowing the other was there. Which is exactly what would have happened, I believe, if it weren't for my best gay friend, Ford.

So actually, rethinking it more, first a moment now about Ford, Ford and me. Then on to Ben and me.

When I first knew Ford at the university here, Ford was not his whole name. He was in fact known as Robert Bob Ford, named after both of his grandfathers. But just Ford is how he signed all his work, and once he began selling his paintings we all began calling him the same.

I have known Ford for over six years. We were in graduate school together, the same entering class, School of Art. For a while we were both of us School of Art stars.

But here was the difference between Ford and me. Ford is a player and he believed in the school, he believed in hard work, in ambition. He believed in success, in talent. He believed, specifically, he'd been chosen and took his star station to heart. I, as I've said, took a different route. I just painted and painted and painted. Until the day that I didn't. And haven't, in fact, since.

Ford thinks it a shame I gave up on art. It is not something we can discuss. Although after moving to Mott Street, I did once give it a try. Ford had come for a visit, he wanted to know why it was I'd quit school, and I decided to level with him. The truth is, I told Ford, the art that once made us School of Art stars is just an odd knack, that's all. A trick we both happen to know how to do. The surprise is that others don't know the trick too.

Ford rolled his eyes, said Margaret, I do not buy this. And we have ended up differently, he and I. Ford now teaches full-time at the school, he regularly exhibits and sells. And I—well, I work at the Project in paste-up.

Still, regardless of paths, Ford and I have stayed close. He is my oldest friend in this town. We are comfortable with each other, we have history. Ford is nothing if not loyal, he likes to say. He has my best interests at heart. Which in turn gives him license, he also believes, to point out all that is wrong with me.

There is reason, Ford thinks, for concern—apart, that is, from my want of dedication and generally deficient spirit. Lately, Ford says, my poor social skills in particular have begun to worry him. He believes that since leaving both school and art, I have developed attachment issues. I have simply, personally detached. And here Ford points to the fact that, though single, I have bought a story-and-a-half stone house and settled into it most evenings alone.

“You are becoming an old maid, Margaret,” Ford told me last year on another one of his visits. “Just look at you, there in your sweatpants.” It was after I'd just bought a color TV, and actually, it was not the TV at issue. Ford approved of this purchase, he did in fact seem to encourage it. He took me out shopping, explained chromacolor, demonstrated remote control. But then, once I plugged in the set at home, and began watching it single-mindedly, Ford, like a shot, turned on me. Well, it's all over now, Margaret. You'll only be leaving your house now for milk. Grocery shopping will become your one social event. Then you'll be back with your color TV, night after cold winter night, your feet on some raggedy hassock.

“It is what all you spinsters come to, Margaret. Sooner or later. You'll see.”

In my defense, I must say that this is my first television. Or the first TV that I've owned. I was, to be honest, for a time once in possession of Ford's old black-and-white, a loan during a brief charitable period. But I was not at that point a true television
fan. Ford's set tuned to only one station, local and educational, so I just watched old movies mostly, ones starring William Holden when possible. I'm not sure that even counts as TV.

But now I am the owner of a new color set, seventeen inches on the diagonal. And I began viewing, indiscriminately most nights—
M*A*S*H
, of course,
Monty Python
,
The Brady Bunch
,
Fat Albert
,
Maude
. It seemed inordinately to bother poor Ford. Although there were other things too that concerned him, he said, take my electric blanket, for instance.