The Business of Naming Things (25 page)

You look at the poem in your pocket. Almost lost in the lining, so you have to dig.

            
Deep in my heart's well, fluffed and grey
,

            
The ashes of love no longer smolder
,

            
When fanned they glowed and sparked a bit

            
But soon went out and now grow colder
.

Gray
and
bit
don't work.

            
Old Bob less love was incomplete;

            
New Bob of others joys will take
,

            
What if till then my heart skips a beat?

            
I think the drink was worth the ache
.

Really, you think. Is it worth it? And what do you want? See your son. You should go home. Should have named him
William, like in the book—William Doherty, D.D. Call him Liam. Maybe she. No. Not hers to name.

Not Tim, after your da. Not after him. Loss and guilt, all that unites them, the very only thing . . . is what?

Kevin. Kevin Barry's good.

Scrap that poem. But: back in your pocket. You wipe, your tail burning.

The light in the counter area is blinding. One napkin dispenser burns like phosphorus. The fire you are in. Jim and Jimmy are at a back table, three coffees. Who's the guy who just left? you ask. No, this one's for you, says Doyle. No, you say. Someone just left. Someone just went somewhere, you say, looking through the plate-glass window. You realize “bud” in reverse is “bud”—obverse.

You sit down. Somebody just left, you mutter. The seat seems warm. Its seams are warm, or is it the piping, and you get a chill; you shiver up through your tweed cap. You look at the newspaper—the consolations of print, its warm assurances, the many points of purchase, you claim them, one after another, climb around in the typography, and you realize you are reading a little item that says Clifford Brown is dead. Turnpike, rain-slicked, a turn. Two others. You can't fucking believe it. You saw Brownie, what, six hours ago. Rain-slicked. A turn. Turnpike.

You don't say anything, because this can't be true.

—Robert Emmet buried by torchlight, Jimmy Curran says, bringing you back. He's quoting; he's proud of himself.

—Yeah, you say. I'm in the book. Real Irishmen are, eh, Doyle. There's a Doyle in there of course there is, and a Gallaher, a good long bit on a Gallaher, Ignatius. Lenehan, like Leo. I know a Martin Cunningham, sells web sheet. McHugh, O'Molloy. How many different characters? I wonder. We just
saw our Buck Mulligan, with the horn. There's some guy in Canada has done the work; it's at the library. Word count, quarter million. Most common word:
the
. What's the word known to all men? Fuck, maybe
the
.

Your heart sinks and somehow you say, Brownie's dead.

—Brownie lives! Jimmy Curran says excitedly.

You tell him what you know. You square the paper around for the two of them to read.

—Late bull into the night desk. Merchant probably still there with Farragut, Phillies wrap-up. He pulled it, I bet.

Doyle doesn't know him. Curran looks shaken. You offer him your flask. He declines, but you take it for him. Black coffee velvet.

—Did you see him in New York? Doyle. A sore point, New York. Drove cab, saw so much. On Jack Paar once. In the audience, Jack Paar asked you, What do you do? Nothing, all you could some up with. National TV. I'm doing nothing.

You tried. What? Wrong? Swim the Hellespont like Bryon. No guts. You tried.

—This is awful, says Doyle. Three people gone, like that.

Change it up.

—Doyle, what do you hear from the girls?

He knows. Something. Used to date Ginny with you with Cassie Meer. Double date, the Thalia. Cabaret once—Ginny singing, “I'm looking for a few stout-hearted men.” Queers loved her. Then the play.

—She got married, guy from Catholic. Big fella. All I remember, met him once, something about Nixon.

That's what you meant but you'd better say, No, Cassie. My once affianced.

—Not a word, but she and Ginny are still bunking, I'd wager. Doyle laughs and twinkles.

Back to Ginny.

—That play killed her, you say. The musical. We all went to see it. Closed in a week. Walter Kerr was no help. I told her, Ginny, this is old. You're better than this. Took her downtown to see Billie with Teddy Wilson. Not what she once was, but Ginny wept. So did I.

January. Or February, '54.

—You know, we had a night, you tell the Jims, looking at your eyes in your coffee.

—I bet she was something, Doyle says to you. Lonely voice.

But you don't mean Billie.

Jim Doyle wants to walk and you don't. It's past three and raining still. He's got his CPO coat.

—Wool, he says. You never feel it. Like a lamb. Stand in the rain all day.

—Irish donkey, you joke.

—Jimmy, come with me. We can hop the work train. I know the guy. O'Toole.

You skip down at Broad and Market underground. O'Toole's there with his big watch. Lets you on the platform in return for a pill and a snort.

You don't know how to get home. Ironic, it's the story of Ulysses. Home,
nostos
, getting back to Ithaca, your wife, your son. But you don't know why you are getting there from here. How here? Why you, only you?

You are suddenly felled. Down on your haunches in the subway, the dark tunnel. Where's Charon, to take you to the other side? You wait in some kind of pain—your head, your eyes, your lungs, they've had enough, and you itch, up and down your torso you could scratch if you could scratch. As you squat there, you reach your hands inside your coat and you do, you do, you do, you do.

Somehow better. Jimmy's asleep already, over near the pay phone. Let someone call; no one's calling.

You are beyond silence down here. Unseen and out of the way and still, just fifteen feet below the skin of the earth, whirring at what, a thousand miles an hour; the earth is 25,000 miles round and goes round in twenty-four hours, about that, about sixteen miles a second, you are speeding.

What you want to say, no audience. Always talking your world, loud, loud. Want sound, to hide in, you sometimes think. Noise. But everything's empty here, waiting for the shovel train. Track maintenance, chug-chug. You should've walked it. McGillicuddy probably stocking the shelves at the state store. A pint for the morrow. Not now. Sit tight; you're sitting tight, squatting, asquat the platform, astride a reservoir of ideas, things tried, and not. Jimmy could sleep all night. You never sleep, even when you do—whirl of lights and sounds incessant, unceasing, which word? Eternal. Music of the spheres—b-flat, a blues key. Neat trick. God's a musician; he's Robert Johnson. Orlovitz in New York said Miles is God. Clifford would know, if he's there yet. He is. Good God! Younger than me. Than I. What have I done?

This'll work, you think. Play it out. Your class a sensation. Dwight Macdonald writes about it. About you. Who was the guy?—Albert Erskine comes knocking. Faulkner. This is what you say now and this is where you get lost. Every single time.

You feel the loneliness in that book. The loneliness of all books in that book. That's what deepens after many goes at it—who notices the first time that Bloom aches for not circumcising his son? Who didn't make it. Betrays his father. Who didn't make it. Happens so quick: Bloom revives Stephen in Nighttown; Private Carr dropped him. Has a vision of his son, who has not died—has now lived on somewhere
these eleven years. A little boy looking at him vacantly. Who notices, hundreds of pages apart, that Stephen and Bloom separately notice the same cloud obscuring the same sun? Son, now you get it, fifth read.

You don't need help. It's all there—signature of all things. For you to read. Stephen thinks that. Joyce knows that. But you can show others. That'd be a decent job. Do it. Have you lost that shot? Left Temple, why? Left New York, why? The things you should've done. Left home, left the parish, left Philly.
Philos adelphos
. Loving brother. Really? What brotherly love? You're underground, your choice. On your lonesome.

Then what is it you read. What you read or see in the great books, is what there is in you. That's what they enable. This you know, and you've earned it.

What you see here: The guy in the brown macintosh who haunts Glasnevin is the ghost of Bloom's father, who killed himself. The snatches of the note left to Leopold—in that second drawer at 7 Eccles, he kept it—says he is going to his wife, and she's in Glasnevin, and he's not—buried in Ennis, unconsecrated ground. A terrible fate. What a church. That would kill a son, wouldn't it? Who's the real victim. Would kill a father, too. Don't have ten kids. The math doesn't work, you know, you know. He's half the man for every one he had; you once did the math, do it here, starting at 100 percent, goes to 50 with the first, Patrick; 25 with Terry; 12½, Frank; 6¼, Joe; 3⅛, Betty; 1
, Helen; then it gets easy—convert the whole fraction, not 1
but
, then just double the denominator heading out, for every halving:
, Agnes;
, Tom;
, Vincent;