“I know you know me, James. But who invited you?”
“You did,” I said.
“I did not,” said John.
“Yes you did,” I said. I was aware of how childish I sounded.
He looked at me strangely for a moment, as if he had never seen me before. “I didn’t invite you, James, I invited someone else, and if you’ll excuse me I’ll go see if he’s here.”
As he turned away from me I said, “He isn’t here.”
He turned back to me. “How do you know?”
“Well, he is here, in a manner of speaking—”
“Cut this crap, James, I don’t think it’s funny.”
I looked around as if Philip Braque might actually be there, and I could point him out to John, and everything would be fine. But of course he wasn’t. “It’s me,” I said.
“What do you mean?” John asked.
“Philip Braque is me.”
“So it was you I was chatting with this afternoon?”
“Yes,” I said.
John looked at me for a moment and then said, “Excuse me, James, but you’re seriously fucked up. Fuck you.” And then he turned and walked away into one of the side rooms.
He had spoken his final words so loudly that people standing nearby turned and looked at me. I didn’t know what to do. I sipped my champagne, but my hand was shaking and I dribbled a little down the front of my shirt. I pretended I didn’t notice. I felt very stupid standing there in my dribbled-on untucked shirt, which I realized looked stupid, not sophisticated, watched by all these elegant and successful people. I stood there for another moment so it wouldn’t look as if I was running away, and when I thought I had established my equanimity I turned and walked across the courtyard and into the entrance hall. My friend was arranging rows of gift bags on the marble floor. “Don’t forget your gift bag, Mr. Braque,” she called out to me as I passed her and hurried out onto the sidewalk. I stood there for a moment, dazed, trying to figure out what had happened, but all I could think about was the fact that John had told me I was fucked up.
I heard someone say my name and I turned around. John was standing behind me. I saw that he had a gift bag and I absurdly thought, Oh, good—he can’t be that angry if he took a gift bag. But he was angry. “Come with me,” he said. He grabbed my arm just above my elbow and led me to the corner of Fifth Avenue, where we stood for a moment in silence. I thought maybe he was going to hail a taxi, but where would he take me? Was he going to take me somewhere and kill me? Then the light changed and we crossed the street. We walked uptown a block or two, and then he turned us into the park and steered us toward a bench, where he none-too-gently sat me down.
It was about seven, a beautiful summer evening, and the park was thick and green and lovely about us. I’m always shocked by the park—just the fact that it exists, this huge open space in the middle of the city. People strolled by or skated or ran past. Everyone seemed calm and happy.
We sat there for a few moments in silence. I was afraid to look at John, so I watched the people pass by. I think I thought that if I didn’t look at him, he might not speak, that we might just sink forever into the idyllic stasis surrounding us. And then suddenly I couldn’t stand the silence, the waiting for him to speak, so I said, “I’m sorry.”
He didn’t respond, just made a strange moaning sound. I looked at him. He was leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands. Was he crying? After a moment he said, “I’m very angry with you, James.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry—”
“No,” he said. “I don’t think you understand. Listen to me.” But he said nothing. An Irish setter trotted past us, pulling a man on Rollerblades behind him. “What you did was very mean, James. It was cruel. You can’t fuck with people like that. It isn’t funny. You obviously have no idea what it means for me to think I’ve met a smart and interesting man who is interested in me. It means a lot to me. There is nothing I want more than that. Nothing.”
“I’m sorry,” I said again.
“It was very cruel. If you were an adult, you would understand that. Did you think it was funny?”
“No,” I said. “Well, yes in a way. I didn’t think you would take it so seriously. I thought you would just think …”
“What?”
“I don’t know. It was stupid, I know. But I thought you would be impressed. That I could create a person you liked.”
“You don’t think I like you?”
“I guess you do. But I don’t mean like that. I thought you would like me more …”
“What do you mean?”
“I guess I was thinking that if I could create a person you liked, you would see that I am that person.”
“But you’re not that person. You’re nothing like that person.”
“I know,” I said. “I guess I don’t like who I am. I want to be that person. I wish I were that person.”
“Well then, become that person. Learn about modern art and go study at the Sorbonne. But don’t fuck around with other people.”
I wanted to say I’m sorry again, but I knew it sounded so lame. But I said it anyway, because I didn’t know what else to say.
We sat there for a moment in silence and then John stood up. “I’m going to walk over to the West Side,” he said.
Because I didn’t know why he was telling me this, I didn’t know how to respond. “Okay,” I said.
“I’m very sorry this happened. I’m very disappointed in you, James,” he said. And then he turned and began to walk quickly away from me.
I didn’t know what to do. I sat there until it got dark. It happened very slowly, almost imperceptibly. At some moment when it seemed that there was quite a bit of light still left in the sky the lamps along the pathways flickered on and after that it was difficult to tell the real light from the fake light. Or I suppose the light cast from the lamps was no less real than the light in the sky, but there was something false about it, and finally, after a long time, that was all the light there was.
Monday, July 28, 2003
WHEN I GOT HOME THERE WAS A MAN SITTING ON THE LIVING room couch, crying. He leaned forward, holding his head in his hands, covering his face, but I knew he was crying by the sound he made. For a moment I thought it must be my father, because I could think of no other man who would be crying in our apartment, but when I shut the door the man looked at me. It was Mr. Rogers. He resumed his hunched position and put his face back into his hands and cried for another thirty seconds or so, and then abruptly stopped, as if he were on a timer and had been shut off. He sat up straight, and looked at me again.
“What are you doing here?” I asked. I did not mean to sound interrogatory, but I did.
“Your mother asked me to come by and pick up my things,” he said. “And leave my keys.” He held up a set of keys, and jangled them at me.
“Oh,” I said. “Well, she’s not here now.”
“I know. That’s why I’m here, she wanted me to come when she wasn’t here. She said she never wants to see me again.”
I felt I was in no position to either refute or corroborate this statement, so I said nothing. But Mr. Rogers looked at me as if he expected a response.
“Well, do you need any help?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “Unless you want to provide a shoulder to cry on.”
I assumed he was making a joke, but he said it so sincerely I wasn’t sure. So I tried to smile at him, in a way that suggested that I both felt sorry for him and found him funny. It must have looked weird because he said, “There’s no need to look at me like that, James.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, and began walking toward the hallway.
“What did she tell you?” I heard him say.
I stopped walking but didn’t turn around. “What?” I asked.
“What did your mother tell you?”
“About what?”
“What did she tell you happened to us in Las Vegas?”
I turned around and looked at him. “She told me you stole her credit and debit cards while she was sleeping and used them to spend or gamble away about three thousand dollars.”
Mr. Rogers didn’t say anything, he just looked at me as if he thought I would continue. And then when I suppose it became clear that I wouldn’t, he said, “Legally, once we were married, the cards were joint property. Did she tell you anything else?”
“No,” I said. “Did you do anything else?”
“Well, I did a lot of things,” he said. “You spend a few days in Vegas with someone, you do a lot of things.”
This was exactly the kind of moronic statement Mr. Rogers was given to making that had initially caused me to form my bad opinion of him.
“I meant did you do anything else that might have bothered my mother?”
“Apparently everything I do bothers your mother. I just wish she had decided that before she married me.”
“But if she did, I doubt she would have married you.”
“That was my point,” he said.
“Well, maybe if you had stolen money from her before you got married, she would have decided that.”
“I didn’t steal it,” Mr. Rogers said. “As I just explained to you, the money was ours. And in any case, I was borrowing it. I had every intention of giving it back. In fact, I was planning on winning big, and bringing her back more money.”
“Well, I don’t think that was a very good plan,” I said.
“I know,” he said. He leaned back into the sofa and then reached behind him and pulled out one of Miró’s rawhide bones, which he likes to bury in the cushions. Mr. Rogers looked at it quizzically and then tossed it to the floor. He rubbed his hands together and sighed. “That’s the sad thing. I knew it was a bad plan. Even while I was doing it, I knew. I mean, I told myself it would be great, I’d win big and I’d be happy and she’d be happy, and I’d take her to see those faggy lion tamers and we’d drink champagne and eat fish eggs, but of course I knew it was a mistake, a terrible mistake. But I did it anyway. That’s the awful thing about being addicted to something. Even while you’re doing it and loving it you know it’s wrong, and you know you’re weak, and you know you’re probably ruining your life.”
This speech took me by surprise, and I wasn’t sure how to respond. Mr. Rogers lowered his head into his hands again, but made no sound. After a moment I said, “Do you mean caviar?” I don’t know why I said this. I just felt like I had to respond, and that was the only response I could think of.
He looked up at me. “What?”
“You said you would eat fish eggs.”
“Fish eggs are caviar,” he said.
“I know,” I said. “It’s just that most people say caviar.”
“Well, I say fish eggs,” he said. “What’s the big deal?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“Do you think you’re better than me because you say caviar?” Mr. Rogers gave me a look that is usually described as “withering.” “You never did like me, did you? You’re a smug little bastard. A smug little bastard who doesn’t know shit.” He pushed himself up from the couch in an exaggeratedly old-mannish way, as if it was all too much for him, and picked up a suitcase that was on the floor. He gently placed it on the couch, and looked at it carefully, as if he might have the wrong suitcase. Then he patted it fondly, as if it were his true love and he was rescuing it from the awful world of our apartment. He looked over at me. “I left that Nordic ski piece of crap in the bedroom. I can come back and get it, or you can keep it. Or put it on the street. Throw it out the window. Whatever you want.”
In the early euphoric days of Mr. Rogers’s and my mother’s romance, when apparently people think miracles can happen, he had bought a Nordic Track Skier and set it up in my mother’s bedroom, where he intended to ski for twenty minutes every night before going to bed, and in this way restore his body to its former (supposed) glory.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll deal with it.”
“Then I suppose this is the end of the road for me,” he said. He picked up the suitcase. “This particular road, at least.”
I considered telling him that divorce proceedings and whatever criminal charges my mother might bring against him would prolong the road, but I didn’t, because he looked so pitiable standing there with his suitcase, like the drawing of Willy Loman on the cover of
Death of a Salesman.
“Well, goodbye,” I said.
“Yes, exactly,” he said. “Well, goodbye.” He walked toward me, and for an awful moment I thought he was going to hug me, but he reached out and handed me the keys. Then he turned and went out the door.
I waited, listening to his footsteps descending the stairs and the
thunk thunk thunk
of his suitcase as it hit each railing, and then, when I was sure he was gone, I closed the door and locked it. I bolted it. I had a strange feeling that there was someone else in the apartment. I suppose it was opening the door and seeing Mr. Rogers sitting in the living room, but I felt like strange people might have occupied all the rooms, so I walked through the apartment, looking in every room. Of course, there was no one there except for Miró, who was sleeping on my mother’s bed. He raised his head and looked at me uninterestedly, and then sighed judgmentally and resettled himself. I noticed there was a folded piece of paper lying on the floor by the bed, which I assumed Miró had displaced. I went over and picked it up, unfolded it. It was a note to my mother from Mr. Rogers, and I read it:
Dear Marjorie, I am so sad and disappointed. I’m sorry I have failed myself but I am a thousand times sorrier that I failed you. You do not know how sorry that makes me—to fail the person who gave me back my life. I hope you know that I will always love you. I am a stupid man so I don’t know very much about forgiveness, but if you could find it in your heart to forgive me I know I would never disappoint you, or myself, again. Please give me that chance. Your devoted husband, Barry
I thought maybe I should throw it away. I knew the note would upset my mother, and since there was no way she would get back together with Mr. Rogers, what was the point of her reading it? He had already upset her once, why give him another chance? Then I thought about how in
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Angel Clare doesn’t find the note that Tess slips under his door because it slides beneath the rug and how basically because of that a lot of awful things happen and she ends up dead and so I decided not to interfere with the natural course of events.
I made myself a fried egg sandwich and ate the remaining third of a carton of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia frozen yogurt that I found in the freezer and then went into my bedroom and did a search for three-bedroom, two-bath houses built before 1950 and under $200,000 in Indiana. There were lots and some of the houses were really beautiful. Made of stone, real stones that aren’t identical, with screened porches and birdbaths in the front yards, front yards with big old trees rising above the house, trees that might be struck by lightning during a thunderstorm and collapse upon the house, but probably not.
A little after eleven I heard my mother and Gillian arrive home. They had gone to see
Long Day’s Journey into Night
, an outing which was a present for Gillian’s twenty-first birthday. Neither of them seemed to think that going to see a four-hour tragic play about the most dysfunctional dramatic family ever was an odd choice for a mother/daughter birthday celebration, but such are the dynamics of my family. My door was closed and my mother knocked softly on her way down the hall.
“What?” I said.
“Are you awake?”
“No,” I said.
“Has Miró gone out?”
“No.”
“Well, will you take him before you go to bed?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Good night,” she said. She sounded tired.
“How was the play?” I asked.
“Very good,” she said. “But long. I’m exhausted. Good night.”
“Mr. Rogers was here,” I said.
“Oh,” she said. “I told him to come by and collect his stuff. Did you see him?”
“Yes,” I said. “He was here when I got home.”
“Well, I’m sorry if that was awkward for you.”
“It was fine,” I said.
“Well, it’s the last you’ll see of him.”
I didn’t say anything because I thought, How do you know that? I could see him tomorrow on the street. Maybe you’ll read his note and call him and he’ll come over tonight.
“Well, good night,” my mother said.
“Good night,” I said.
A few minutes later Gillian knocked on my door and said, “Can I come in?”
I felt that what with John and Mr. Rogers and my mother I had had more than my share of human interaction that evening, so I said, “No. Go away,” which of course did not deter her from entering.
She opened the door and walked into my room, looked around a moment, and then sat on my bed, as if she had only wanted to enter the room, not talk to me.
After a moment I said, “What do you want?”
“Mom told me to talk to you.”
“About what?”
“What do you think? About your I’m-not-going-to-college-but-moving-to-the-Midwest nonsense.”
“It isn’t nonsense.”
“Yes, James, it is. I have been instructed to come and tell you that it’s nonsense. It is nonsense, James.”
“Well, I don’t care. One man’s nonsense is another man’s … sense.”
“You’re so wise, James. You should write a little book of aphorisms.”
“Fuck you,” I said.
Gillian said nothing for a moment, and then she said, “Seriously, James, I wish you’d get over all of this and just go to college.”
“Why do you care if I go to college or not?”
“I don’t, really. But Mom said if I convince you to go to college, she’ll get Dad to buy me an Austin Mini Cooper convertible as a graduation present. So you see, if you’d just cooperate and stop being so silly, everyone would be happy: Mom would be happy, Dad would be happy, and I would be happy.”
“What about me?”
“You would be happy, too. Or not happy, but no less happy than you are now. And honestly, James, I honestly think you
would
be happier. Just because you hated high school doesn’t mean you’ll hate college.”
“I didn’t hate high school.”
“Well, you could have fooled me. Did I miss something? I don’t remember you being voted Mr. Congeniality.”
“Just because I didn’t sleep around in high school doesn’t mean I hated it.”
“So I was popular in high school. We aren’t talking about me, James. We’re talking about you. I don’t know what you’re so scared of.”
“I’m not scared of anything.”