The Portable Veblen (13 page)

“You make me feel guilty,” Melanie continued. “Like I did something wrong.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“And I get frightened,” said her mother. “That you might have some of Rudge’s genes.”

Veblen felt she was now required to reassure her mother how few genes of Rudge’s she possessed. “I
do
have some of his genes,” she said today, trying something different. “You mated with him, how can I help it?”

“Don’t blame me!” cried her mother.

“Okay, well, what’s done is done.”

“Veblen, he is certifiably insane. It’s something to look out for.”

“I’ll try to keep on top of it.”

“As you know, all kinds of treatments are out there nowadays, the world is different, you have nothing to be ashamed of—unless untreated.”

“You don’t think I’m insane, do you?”

Her mother sat up. “Only when you talk about squirrels following you all over California. You’re the bravest, strongest girl in the world,” said her mother, squeezing her hand.

“No, I’m not.” She wanted to say:
Maybe compared to you
.
Not compared to anyone else.

“I won’t argue about this,” said her mother. “Now pull yourself together. You’re about to have a grand adventure. If you can’t enjoy it for yourself, enjoy it for me!”

“Wait a second. I’m insane but I’m brave and strong, I shouldn’t marry but it’s a grand adventure. . . . Do you even know what you’re saying?” Veblen asked, irritably.

“Stop being so literal!” said her mother, who always had to have the last word.

Shortly they stood at the edge of the ravine, calling down to the men.

Linus called up:

“The
Eagle
has landed!”

Veblen and her mother hooted back.

“Paul?” Veblen called.

“Yes?”

“How you doing?”

“I’ve been better,” he called back.

“Oh, you’ll be tired tonight!” Melanie cackled, an obvious sadist.

“Moving the roof should be easier, now that we’ve cut the trail,” called Linus.

They could hear the sound of the buckling sheet and the grunts
and instructions going back and forth between the men for almost ten minutes before they could see any sign of the roof wiggling up the bank.

“This is a bitch of a job,” yelled Linus, with earned ferocity.

“I second that,” yelled Paul. They seemed to be getting their strength through yelling.

“What seems to be the problem?” called Melanie.

“We’re being shredded alive,” Paul called. “Get out the rubbing alcohol!”

“Honey, it’s just very heavy and we have to hold it over our heads, and the weight shifts and our legs catch on the canes. You have no idea!” Linus called up. “We should’ve hired someone with a winch.”

•   •   •

I
T WAS COOLER,
the sunlight weak and broken, near dusk, when the men mounted the crest of the ravine, the roof flashing triumphantly. Paul’s clothes clung to him, his hair full of leaves and brambles, scratches seeping blood across his cheeks and neck.

Melanie said, “Let me get a picture!”

When her mother handled a camera, she acted like some kind of hip photojournalist following a rock band. She took a few shots of the men standing lacerated by the corrugated sheet.

“We’ll get it up on top another day,” piped Linus.

“Paul, you’re going down in our hall of fame,” said Melanie.

“Shower,” Veblen said. “Come with me.”

She herded Paul into her childhood bedroom, with its sea green walls and old corkboard, retaining some of the flavor of that era, such as a faded quote from somewhere she’d once typed and stuck in with a now-rusted thumbtack:

The greatest luxury in life is loneliness. All you have to do is furnish it with the inner life.

These days the room was used to store her mother’s art supplies and fabrics, but the way the sun came through the windows was exactly the same, creating nostalgia and melancholy in equal measure.

He collapsed onto the twin bed, clutching a towel. “I can barely speak. Oh my god.”

“They ambushed you.”

“Oooooh. Yes. They did.”

“I’ll have to think of a good reward.”

“Yes, you will.”

He tried to kiss her. She whipped a pitiful thin pillow at him. He jetted it back. They mounted repeated attacks, displacing air that made her territorial map ruffle on the wall. “What’s that?” Paul asked.

So she told him. The map represented a place called Wobb, with all the topography and various special places sketched in. No, it wasn’t quite like Cobb. It was a place where animals had been gathering to reinstate their rights, and where a runaway girl lived by herself in a tree house and was somehow an important part of their world. Humans simply could no longer see the intrinsic value of anything. Squirrels, for instance, had thought that after fifty million years on the North American continent, it was safe to let down their guard. They had made a bad contract with people in innocence and trust, and had paid the price.

And yes, the girl had been shocked to learn that squirrels were under contract. But of course they were. They didn’t get to coexist in cities and towns for nothing.
Everything
was under contract,
they told her. Every inch of soil, every animal, every plant. Frustration was rife. The Nutkinistas had been gaining stature among the downtrodden. The teachings of Nutkin had become widely accepted.

Wobb even had its own language.
“Hibere wibe spibeak Wibobbean.”

“Whoa,” Paul said. “Like the Brontë sisters, out on the moors with your little world.”

“Who says it was little?” she replied.

His head flopped to the side, where he caught sight of something else. “Is that your old typewriter?”

“Yeah.”

“I want to see it! That was one of the first things I knew about you.”

Veblen could see the scruffy case under the desk. She was superstitious about the typewriter.

“It’s really old and musty.”

But she pulled it out, and Paul rolled over to get a look at it. Fading stickers still held to its sides.

“Bring it back with you. I think you need that typewriter.”

“Why?”

“It belongs with you. Not sitting here in the dark.”

She pushed him toward the shower.

•   •   •

M
ELANIE WAS ARRANGING
the plates on the table by herself, a sign that she was on a first-class flight of fancy. Her eyes were bright and excited. Veblen remembered the hopes that look had inspired in her when she was a young girl wholly dependent on her
mother, when Melanie wore her hair in a long braid, and was thin and impulsive, and they would set out on the spur of the moment with some aim, like finding a warehouse where they were selling pinto beans in bulk, or locating a printing press that was filling its Dumpster with old broadsides printed on fine cotton rag, or driving down to Berkeley, where one of Melanie’s former professors was giving a lecture on Thorstein Veblen.

“He’s great!” she said. “What a surprise to find a man like that, someone who’ll roll up his sleeves like that. . . . I wasn’t sure, Veblen, but he’s real.”

Despite herself, Veblen felt joy rise in her gullet, and her cheeks levitated, not for the benefit of her mother but for her own victory over the odds. “I told you.”

“He’s real. He’s solid,” said her mother, and Veblen watched as she opened the bottom drawer of the chest and pulled out the real silver, the Gorham Chantilly Veblen’s grandparents had bestowed on their only child when they sent her to Vassar and dreamed of pairing her with a future captain of industry. (Sure enough, there had been a Dartmouth boy named Dave Dandridge, a fine captain of industry in the making, but when he proposed after two years of dating, her mother broke up with him because his expectations were way too integrated into the systems Melanie was suspicious of.)

“Very nice guy,” noted Linus, with a glass of wine. “We had a great talk down there about all kinds of medical advancements and so on. He’s got a good head on his shoulders.”

Veblen looked at Linus, with his square shoulders and worn belt, a solid man himself, someone who didn’t manipulate, who didn’t think of himself every two seconds, who had always been reliable and kind to her, year after year. He took care of her mother
like a nurse, chauffeur, secretary, bodyguard, accountant, and loving friend, all in one.

In short order Paul presented himself, refreshed, smelling of Dove soap, his face full of color, his skin shiny, his hair groomed and slick. He was beautiful!

And they sat for Key lime pie, with a buttery graham cracker crust, in wedges on the Limoges china plates.

“We survived,” said Linus.

“Conquerors,” Paul said.

“I didn’t think we’d make it at one point.”

“When my leg went into that snake hole, I thought that was it.”

“When I took the vine in the eye, that was my low point.”

They liked him, and he liked them! Tears of joy made her blink.

“Delicious pie,” Paul said.

“My grandmother’s recipe,” said Melanie.

“Veblen’s a great cook too,” Paul remarked. “She must have learned from you.”

Some people liked her mother and Linus. For instance, the Yamamotos, a visiting couple from Japan, the wife an artist, interested in textiles and art paper, whom her mother had pursued and won over. And the librarian couple from Sacramento, the Gilberts, interested in Native American artifacts and books. But one year the Gilberts house-sat for them and evidently snooped around, and Melanie felt violated and terminated the friendship. The Yamamotos remained friends, likely because they had crossed the Pacific Ocean for good. They still sent handmade
Akemashite omedetou!
cards. If Paul liked her mother and Linus, maybe there was a change coming on the wind.

“Well,” said Melanie. “A wedding.”

Paul looked at Veblen expectantly, so Veblen found herself saying, “Actually, we’re thinking maybe as early as May.”

“May. That’s very soon!” Melanie regarded Paul with respect. “Your folks, are they excited?”

“God, yes. They think Veblen is the greatest thing that’s ever happened to our family.”

“They do?” Veblen said. Unfortunately, this fed into her disproportionate need to take responsibility, causing her to start worrying about all the ways she’d have to behave to continue to be the greatest thing that had ever happened to the Vreeland family.

“Well, she is,” said Melanie.

“Mom!”

“This girl is very special,” said Linus. “I couldn’t be prouder of her.”

“If you’re not good to her, we’ll have you for dinner!” said her mother.

“Yikes,” Paul said, but Veblen was touched by the display.

Then at last, the long, milling good-bye by the car. Veblen drove, and they pulled away, down the driveway rutted and full of deceptive puddles. Paul reclined in the passenger seat. He said, once they had traveled about a mile, “Jesus god.”

“That was so heroic of you!”

“I had no choice,” Paul said, groaning. “She was totally pissed at first, wasn’t she? Wasn’t she about to explode?”

“That was normal. She liked you a lot.”

“Really?”

“She did! Did you like her okay?”

He made a noise that could be interpreted as a yes.

“Really, you did?” she ventured to ask. It was like losing your balance to pick a daisy. She began to hiccup deeply, needing to keep hearing that
yes,
to pin it down for all time.

•   •   •

M
EANWHILE, ON A
hammer-shaped parcel outside of Cobb:

“Oh, my. My goodness.” Melanie sat and took up a tissue from her command center, which consisted of her chair, a bear-sized fabric- and foam-covered stump with a back, next to a hand-fashioned multitiered table stuffed with magazines about art, travel, and cooking, volumes about Georgia O’Keeffe and William Morris, and a regularly grabbed
Merck Manual
from 1998. A magnifying glass, tweezers, a mirror, and several tubes of antifungal ointment lay scattered like gear in a miner’s camp. The telephone also sat there, its handle worn dull in the center where Melanie gripped it daily when she called her daughter. “Linus, come!” she cried out, without enough breath behind it, a kind of sucking gasp. When Linus didn’t materialize instantly, she screamed,
“Linus!”

“Yes?” He appeared in the doorway, a damp dish towel thrown over his shoulder.

“I just don’t know what to do. I can’t rest.”

“Honey, there’s nothing you can do. She needs to work this out on her own.”

“But we know something that she doesn’t. Isn’t it our duty to protect her?”

“Dear, is it possible he meant nothing by it? Maybe he was trying to hurry up.”

“Damn it! Do we have to go through this again? I’ve made my case.”

“Sorry, honey, I’m not convinced.”

“Listen to me. When a man wants to make a good impression on a woman’s family, he bends over backward to do it. He thinks ahead. He leaves nothing to chance. This is not something he overlooks. Never in a million years.”

“It is hard to believe it happened, I agree.”

“You look around the bathroom, you clean up the hairs you left in the sink, you make sure you didn’t leave your underwear on the floor, do you know what I’m saying?”

“I do.”

“You do not leave your wet towel wadded up on the floor for your future mother-in-law to find. No, you do not. Not unless you’re a psychopath trying to drive a dagger into her heart!”

“Hmm. Yes and no.”

“What do you mean?”

“You might make a mistake, is all I’m saying. Maybe he’s just a clumsy oaf?”

“If Veblen knew this, it would change everything. She’s a very refined person. She would not stand for it.”

“Let me ask you this,” said Linus. “Let’s say you thought he was perfect for Veblen. And then this happened. Would you have felt the same way?”

“It wouldn’t have happened. A man perfect for Veblen would not do this.”

Linus sighed.

“And the squirrel thing—that’s a sure sign she’s feeling stress.
We worked so hard to help her through that. For nothing! I don’t know what to do,” said Melanie, and commenced again to cry.