The Portable Veblen (25 page)

Later, clearing the plates, she said, “Paul, have you ever felt sorry for the last lima bean on the plate?”

“No,” he said.

“The one that doesn’t get eaten, and gets scraped into the trash?” For she really did feel sorry for it, sitting there, having grown plump, been picked and cooked, for nothing.

“Why should I feel sorry for it?”

“Little did it know, all that, just to end up in the garbage.”

“I don’t believe it can think.”

“I guess I’m projecting onto it.”

“We all end up in the garbage, sooner or later.”

Veblen plucked up the lone lima bean and swallowed it whole.

“The gulf I feel between us, right now, is huge,” she uttered.

“That happens to all couples,” Paul said quickly.

“And do they recover, and get close again?”

“Of course they do.”

“They don’t break up because of it?”

Paul came over and hugged her warmly. “Veb.” When she didn’t reply he said, “This, what we have, means everything to me. I don’t want anything to happen to us.”

“Like what?”

“Well, I’ve seen what can happen.”

She pulled away, feeling an honest stab of jealousy. “I hope this has something to do with our chemistry, not your learning curve.”

“You are so quick to pounce on any reference to women in my past. It’s amusing.”

“I’ll work on that,” she replied, though there hadn’t been all that many.

“You do that.”

“I will. But what was her name again—Millicent Cuthbertson or something?”

“Millie.”

“Millie. Cute.”

He shrugged.

“If we have a daughter, we’ll have to name her Millie, then,” said Veblen, perversely.

“You’re weird.”

“Where is she anyway?”

“I don’t know!”

“You haven’t Googled her?”

“She’s not a high-profile type.”

“Why, does she work temp?”

“No. I don’t want to talk about her, okay?”

“Because it was such true love, it’s too painful?”

“No! What a freak.”

She started to laugh, the way she liked to laugh at mysterious jokes that not even she understood. Strangely, Veblen had never thought of her mother as a hypochondriac before. But could you be a hypochondriac if you genuinely had health problems? And what if it were true, what would it mean? Wouldn’t it mean that all the stuff she and Linus had done for her mother was for nothing?

“You’re going to give me hell, aren’t you? For the rest of my life,” Paul said, hopefully.

She liked that idea. Maybe she could get away with acts of insolence once in a while.

•   •   •

T
HEN IT WAS
a noisy, squirrelous night. The trap was nothing to the squirrel. He would not be trapped!

Fists hit walls, shoes hit ceiling. Veblen told Paul to put cotton in his ears
.

And for the record, she took devious pleasure in the squirrel’s mayhem. She could not say why.

“Veb? You okay?” he asked at one point, after the lights went out.

“Yeah. I’m tired.”

“You’re shaking.”

“Just a chill.”

“Want me to warm you up a little?”

“Sure.”

He reached over and rubbed her shoulders. “How come you’re not wearing your ring?”

For it was back in its velveteen shell.

“I’m getting used to it, don’t worry.”

“You hate it, don’t you?”

“It’s okay, Paul.”

“I want you to
want
to wear it, that’s all.”

“I’ll get used to it,” she said, sighing.

“Let’s get another one,” Paul said.

After a pause, she said, “Let’s just sleep.”

“Okay,” Paul said. “Sleep well. Love you.”

Her throat blocked. “Love you too.”

She shuddered and coughed. She had said the dreaded “Love you” instead of “I love you,” and feared it marked a terrible turning point. To drop the pronoun was surely more than a time saver. She had a hunch that when couples stopped saying “I love you” and said the more neutered, quippy “Love you” instead, something had gone awry, leading to a quick succession of deterioration scenarios and other horrors of intimacy that need not be part of every union—she would not let them be.

She walked in her sleep that night, and found herself damp with sweat at her dresser, trying to shake open a drawer.

      12

T
HE
P
ASSENGER
Y
EARS

I
t is one kind of trouble to kiss your fiancé good-bye in the morning and immediately turn your thoughts to another man. But it’s another kind altogether if the other man has been dead for nine decades, or is of the genus
Sciurus
.

Until this engagement, Veblen thought she knew what she was about. By thirty, she had managed to put away the simmering loneliness of childhood, finding relief in things outside herself, such as in skillfully tending family members who were scattered and needy, and becoming a secret expert on the life of Thorstein Veblen. To ward off uneasy feelings that crept in at unguarded moments, she’d drawn upon a wide array of materials and activities, keeping up with all major periodicals of the day, typing along to Norwegian films, clipping interesting pictures from magazines for some future project, taking brisk bike rides. And then came Paul, and the whole enterprise of their future. Escapist feelings at this point showed a serious breakdown in self-discipline. And strangest of all, right at the moment she should be happiest.

An analyst might ask her to start with her earliest memory. Her mother would insist she go to the doctor for a thorough workup, a philosopher might take a prod to her
facticity,
an anarchist would suggest the trouble lay with the state, and a social critic such as Thorstein Veblen would be sure to mention the many ways her instincts had been thwarted as a citizen of her age.

A few quiet sobs made her feel moist and self-pitying. When the squirrel was around, she felt grounded, real, at ease. Did it matter if relief came in the form of an animal who stuck around and seemed to care?

•   •   •

N
O DOUBT,
her idiosyncrasies abounded. Needing to accommodate her mother to such an extent was clearly one of them.

In the old days, after Linus moved in and began to do the shopping because her mother came unglued in the aisles, she started to receive an apple in her lunch every day, old and grainy and tasteless. Every day she’d take a bite hoping for a nice crisp juicy apple, but to no avail. Then she’d feel guilty about wasting a whole piece of fruit that had grown to maturity for nothing, only to be buried in the tomb of her desk. One day, trying to retrieve her pencil case, Veblen disturbed the order of things and apples began to pour onto the floor, as if she’d hit the jackpot in an apple slot machine. All told, twenty-six of the bruised and moldering fruits rolled through the class, and everyone, even Mrs. Ahrendt, was laughing. The kids gathered them and had a special time out, walking down the road to a horse farm, to throw them into the feed.

The next day, Mrs. Ahrendt came in with a story she’d printed out for the class:

I was sitting in my class one day, minding my own business. I saw something out of the corner of my eye just as I was about to write. I thought at first it was Mrs. Ahrendt. I glanced up and as I did I noticed it was a shiny, red object. It was alive and moving toward me! I looked more closely at it as it advanced. I thought to myself, “It’s a colorful creature from another planet.” It inched closer and closer. Could it be an apple the size of a human? I blinked my eyes wildly. Holy applesauce. It was a giant walking apple with a human head. I knew that head. I realized with a shiver what had happened. Veblen, the apple-eating, apple-saving, apple-happy girl, had been transformed into an absurd, abnormal, but appetizing apple!

The class laughed and Veblen felt what it must be like to be a star. To be notorious for hoarding apples was not wholly unglamorous, and surely better than the last stunt she had been known for, covering her eyes during the class picture because the flashbulbs scared her.

“You should have told me you don’t like Red Delicious,” Linus said that evening. “You’re right, they’ve been hybridized beyond recognition. I can start buying McIntosh or some nice tart Pippins.”

“Okay. What about a generic banana?”

“I hope people don’t get the wrong idea,” said her mother.

“Like what?”

“Is she going to write something about every child in the class?”

“Melanie, this is cute. Let’s not overreact.”

“Why should my daughter be called
absurd
and
abnormal
?”

“Appetizing too, Mom! I’m appetizing!”

“And apple-happy,” said Linus. “That’s praise in my book.”

Indeed, this was one of the first public compliments Veblen ever received, and thereafter, kind words that came her way put her in mind of herself as a giant, walking apple—a sure way to keep one’s pride in check.

•   •   •

O
H, THERE WERE
plenty of ways to do that.

After work on Monday, wrestling her bike into the garage, Veblen received a call from her mother, who was so excited about something, Veblen had to ask her to slow down.

“Linus and I had just gotten back from a very bleak shopping trip to the Costco in Santa Rosa when our phone rang. It was a woman named Susan Hinks.”

“That’s Paul’s assistant,” Veblen said, shocked.

“Yes, exactly. She said that Dr. Paul Vreeland had asked her to look into a referral for me, and that he wished to speak with me. Next thing I knew, he was on the phone! Well, I was quite surprised. You must know all this, don’t you?”

She slammed shut the garage door. “He didn’t tell me anything.”

“You didn’t make him do this?”

“Definitely not.”

“Well, he had actually taken the time to think about my
symptoms and he’s leaning strongly to the adrenal glands as the source of the problem. He said there were two possible places I could go for a study, UCSF and Stanford. Naturally I said Stanford would be my preference, so he said he’d have his assistant find out which would be more suitable and let me know. Now, I’m not joking, ten minutes later this Susan Hinks called, and said Stanford might have a place for me in the next few months. Can you believe it?”

“No, I can’t,” Veblen said, wondering how Paul could have done this to her. He clearly didn’t understand the delicate balance they’d achieved. Her house had never felt so vulnerable.

“So I’ll be able to spend some time with you, and I am thrilled. He feels I may have primary aldosteronism. If I take part in the study, I’ll be hospitalized for two weeks, my diet will be controlled, my urine will be collected, I’ll have a saline infusion, and I’ll be given something called spironolactone. Then the study continues for one to two months as an outpatient. The only known risks are rashes, decreased libido, and tender nipples.”

“Ho!” chimed Linus, somewhere in the room.

“I am really touched by this, dear,” said her mother, passionately. “Please tell Paul how touched I am.”

“So, you’re coming—when?” Standing outside her house in the late afternoon, Veblen had almost lost her voice. It was clear that her mother was now more excited about the trial than about the wedding.

“I don’t know yet. Is this a problem?”

“No,” Veblen said, kicking the trunk of the Aleppo pine.

“You sound uncertain.”

“No, I’m just tired.”

“Have you eaten well today?”

“Pretty well.”

“Are you taking your iron tablets?”

“Yeah,” she lied.

“Will you ignore me when I come?”

“No.”

“Will you make me feel like a hanger-on?”

“Not on purpose.”

“We also received an invitation today from Paul’s parents to a rehearsal dinner before the wedding, which was nice.”

“Oh, good. Nothing fancy, probably just a barbecue.”

“But I’m worried that if we come down the night before and I have a bad night, it will ruin the wedding day for me. I’m considering the possibility of forgoing the rehearsal dinner and getting up bright and early to drive down.”

“But how bad could it be?”

“I don’t sleep well in motels. I don’t sleep well anywhere. Will I be able to spend any time with you or will you be busy with everyone else?”

“You’re sitting with me when we eat, how does that sound?” Veblen said, groaning.

“All right. But you know how much I hate being ignored in crowds.”

“I think this is enough reassurance for now,” Veblen said, remembering the American midcentury philosopher John Dewey, who said in
Art as Experience
that there was a definite problem when wholehearted action became a grudging concession to the demands of duty.

“You’re very good to me, dear,” said her mother, taking Veblen by surprise.

•   •   •

S
HE CAME INSIDE,
threw down her bag, and was greeted by the unmistakable sound of life pent up, of plans derailed, and of a creature biting mad.

“Oh, no.”

And she thought the squirrel knew better!

Veblen found her flashlight, wrestled the chubby ottoman into the shower stall, balanced her desk chair on it, and pressed aside the hatch.

A blast of warm air smacked her face, laced with an odd trace of Turkish coffee and musk. She blinked and peered through the darkness marked by a few slats of light from the vents. Cobwebs brushed her skin, clumped in her eyelashes, across her lips. In trying to clear them, she noted they were softer than cashmere. (But imagine the label, “pure virgin cobweb,” which really wouldn’t do. Yet silk originated in the glands of worms, and no one seemed to mind.) Her nose began to tickle. She wielded her beam.

There was the trap and the squirrel,
her
squirrel, holding on to the wiry bars like a little jailbird. The fine scruff, the tufted ears, the crisp white chest and gray mantle, and the high-flying plume of a tail.

“Oh! I’m so sorry!” She deflected the beam from its eyes. “I never thought you’d get caught!”