The Portable Veblen (34 page)

“When was the last time he traveled, do you remember? Hold on, I’ll get out the chart.”

“I don’t think he’s traveled much at all. I took him out for frozen yogurt once.”

At that moment, Ted Waxman, the director of Sunny Hill, appeared, apparently on his way to a tennis match, and he shook the tips of Veblen’s fingers.

“Mr. Waxman, Miss Amundsen-Hovda is getting married and wants her father there, Rudgear. I’m looking at his status for passes.”

Waxman said, “Congratulations. Let me take a look.”

He took the file, rifling through officiously. Then he cleared his throat a few times and read some notes that had been clipped to the front.

“It appears he hasn’t been out of the facility for two years. His
behavioral record is faultless, but we would still have to progress him through the pass system before releasing him for an overnighter. I take it the wedding is not in Paso Robles?”

“The Bay Area. Atherton.”

“Did you consider having your wedding here, to ease the situation with your father?”

“Um, no,” said Veblen, in all honesty. Should she have?

“Well, every family has a different style,” Waxman said. “Some don’t include them at all.”

“It’s sad,” said Bebe.

“Yes, it is, but by the time they come to us, they’ve dished out enough abuse for a lifetime, and the families have had enough,” Waxman said.

Bebe said, “It’s obvious he was good to you, probably a wonderful dad growing up. I can tell you’re very close.”

Veblen cleared her throat uncomfortably.

Waxman continued, “So let’s see, we’d start him on a patio pass. If he stays on the patio, then he’ll advance to a progress pass
.”

“Is it progress to stay on a patio?” Veblen asked.

“You bet it is. Then if he meets acceptable behavior guidelines he can get a peer pass, and we’ll take it from there.”

“What are acceptable behavior guidelines?” Veblen wondered.

Waxman said, “No murder and mayhem.” He coughed. “Of course I’m being facetious. We have a very good reputation.” He lowered his voice. “It happened before I was here.”

“So we’d better start the process right away,” said Bebe.

“Do you think he’ll be able to have a good time?” Veblen asked, a bit doubtful.

Bebe said, “Girl, it’s your wedding. Your dad should be there whether he has a good time or not.”

“I don’t want it to be an ordeal for him.”

“
He’s
the ordeal, right? Pay it back!”

They laughed with the guilty pleasure of caretakers, and Waxman said, “Ladies, I have piles of work waiting for me.” And he vanished out the back door with his racket.

“I should come get my father myself, don’t you think? So he feels safe?”

“Drive down here the day before your wedding? I’ll arrange it with our transport service. It’s settled. Don’t worry about a thing,” said Bebe, as she had many times, Veblen reckoned, to people whose loved ones were about to make a noose with their sheets and hoist themselves in the closet, or stick a dinner fork through their nasal passages into their brains.

“Thanks, Bebe.”

•   •   •

“
M
AYBE ONCE
some giant picked up my father and set him down somewhere else, like I nearly did to you,” Veblen said to the squirrel, as they hit the road. “And he had no idea how to get home or be okay again. And then everyone thought he was crazy.”

She bit into a yellow Delicious she’d brought along.

“Geez,” she said. “You know what? If you think about it symbolically, the military was the giant, and it plucked him up in Waukegan and set him down in Southeast Asia—and he was never the same again.”

No argument from the squirrel.

“Funny how Bebe thinks we’ve always been close. I’m glad Paul didn’t come, I’m not sure he’d get it.”

The squirrel’s tail flickered gently.

This prompted another call to Paul, again met with an immediate recording. Strange that his phone would be off, and that he hadn’t called her last night or today.

Her thoughts wandered. “You know, I wonder if the gentlemanly title of squire could be connected to the word
squirrel
. Way back, of course. Although I’ve heard it comes from the old Greek
skiouros,
which means shade ass.”

He jauntily lifted his tail and fanned it out over his backside!

“I know the old English was
aquerne,
like acorn. And the German word for
squirrel
is
Eichhörnchen,
which means something like oak-kitty. Nothing to do with squires or knights at all. In fact, your name is used derisively a lot of the time. To be
squirrelly
is to be crazy, nutty, weird. Outside the norm. And to
squirrel
something away is to be a hoarder, a stasher, a miser, a skinflint.

“Why has your name been so abused?

“It’s not fair. Thorstein Veblen’s name was abused,” she said next. “They called him the nutty professor and thought he was some kind of freak. But he had two stepdaughters who adored him. He’d show them natural wonders in the woods, like how balsam sap was good for blisters, and he’d wake them up in the middle of the night to see special stars, and he’d teach them interesting words, and he’d make them pens out of feathers! He was actually really chivalrous when you look into it. One time I went to Chicago with Albertine; she was going to a Jung conference. And I went to the archives at the University of Chicago and read his correspondence. I think his first wife was kind of like my
grandmother, really difficult and weird. Plus, this is kind of weird, she had
infantilized genitalia,
which means she couldn’t have sex or whatever, which isn’t good for a marriage, even though they stayed together for years. Sorry. TMI?” She laughed. Her mother would kill her for saying TMI. But she could say it all she wanted, she was free! TMI! TMI! Actually, come to think of it, TMI sounded stupid. “You see, I need to come to that conclusion empirically, not just avoid saying it because my mother tells me not to, you know what I mean?”

In a while, she said:

“I guess I should tell my mother what’s going on. Is that what you’re thinking?”

The squirrel had no doubt.

“It’s going to be a difficult conversation,” she assessed.

The squirrel knew this too. That he acknowledged it made her feel infinitely stronger.

“All right. I should get it over with.”

So after a few more miles, she called home.

“Hi, Linus!” she said, as the squirrel bore witness. “Can I talk to Mom?”

He spoke in a hush. “She’s outside right now. We put the roof back on the chicken house and we cleaned it up, so she’s having some fun out there with her art supplies.”

“Great,” said Veblen. “Should I call back later?”

“I hear you’ve got all kinds of plans in place for the big day,” Linus said.

“We’re trying. I think it’s coming together.”

“Mind if I get some information?” asked Linus. “Now might be a good time.”

“Go for it.”

“Good. So I understand this is happening at a big fancy house in Atherton?”

“I guess it is. But just for our families and friends. The owner won’t be there.”

“All right, good. That was making your mother nervous. Now, we wanted to know, will there be parking, and will she have to walk a great distance from the car? Her ankles are really bothering her.”

“You guys can have priority parking, right next to the house.”

“Terrific. And—will there be a room she can rest in, if she needs to lie down?”

Veblen rolled her eyes. “Sure, no problem.”

“Okay. And then, will I have access to the kitchen, to make sure I can get her water at any time, or ice, that sort of thing?”

“Yes,” said Veblen, keeping her eyes on the road. “Whatever you need.”

Linus cleared his throat. “All right, Veb. Just a few more here. Food. Have you checked that she can eat what’s on the menu?”

“How about if you send me the latest list of stuff she can’t have and I’ll show it to the caterer.”

“Okay, good plan. I knew you were thinking of her. Do you remember what happened the time we went to my colleague’s wedding in Walnut Creek?”

“Remind me,” said Veblen.

“The jackass caterer had the list months in advance, but all she made for your mother was a bowl of carrots and a hard-boiled egg.”

“I’ll have whole main dishes she can eat,” Veblen asserted.

“Terrific. I’ll go get her now. Take care, Veblen.”

She waited, then heard the distinctive snap of the screen door, and her mother clattering into her place by the phone.

“Hello, dear. Did Linus tell you? I’ve had a lot of arrhythmia the past few days. I had to go to the hospital.”

“Oh my god. You okay now?”

“I think my calcium was low.”

“Yeah, that’s bad.”

“It bleeds out because of my adrenal problems. There’s nothing I can do about it.”

“Sorry, Mom.”

“Well, that’s me,” said her mother. “I’m a little worried about what to wear to this very posh affair.”

“It’s casual. It’s just a house. Don’t worry about it.”

“When you’re me, there’s always something to worry about. Everything goes wrong for me, and you know it.”

She had something else to say, and it was harder. Maybe later. Maybe her mother would scream. She noticed the squirrel staring at her, gripping the bars of the trap.

—Go on, you can do it.

She took a deep breath.

“Mom?”

“Yes?”

—Get it over with, now’s the time.

“I’m driving back—from Paso Robles. I had to take a little trip to bring Rudgear some supplies.”

“Oh, damn that man! That’s the last thing you need.”

“No big deal. Anyway—” She hesitated, but the squirrel stared
at her with utmost trust, waiting patiently for her to do the right thing. “Well, time has gone by, and I was thinking it would make sense to have Rudgear come to the wedding.”

She could swear it, the squirrel beamed and fluffed out all around.

And she could hear her mother’s nostrils flaring, her breath rifling the hairs often found therein.

“I suppose that’s reasonable,” said her mother, at last.

“You think so?” Veblen said, passing a truck full of spinach.

“It’s reasonable if you want me to be—miserable.”

The squirrel stood by.

“Mom.” She took a deep breath, bolstered by the sturdy presence of the squirrel. “He’s not a brute anymore. He is a shell of a person you can take pity on, okay?”

“Everybody gets old, even serial murderers. Does that mean we should take pity on them?”

Her mother would say anything to win an argument.

“Frankly, I resent the fact you have anything to do with him. Why did you find it necessary?”

“Because they needed a next-of-kin person to have power of attorney, and they got in touch with me. It’s okay, really.”

“How is it okay?”

“I don’t mind, it doesn’t bother me.”

“So you’re stuck taking care of a man who never cared for you one iota?”

Why did her mother always have to tell her that her other relatives didn’t care about her? She’d often told Veblen her grandmother didn’t love her because she didn’t love Melanie, her own
daughter, and if she couldn’t love her own child she couldn’t love anybody. And that her grandfather Woodrow only liked her because she was a young woman and wasn’t fat and ugly. “Mom, if you were in my position, you’d do the same thing, wouldn’t you?”

Her mother let out a strangled sigh, bordering on a groan.

“All right. So, do you think he’s wonderful, and that I kept you from having a loving relationship with your father?”

“Don’t twist things.”

“Is he still in that home for the mentally ill?”

“That’s where he is,” said Veblen, her hands rigid on the wheel.

“I see,” said her mother. “I told you all along. At least I can have that satisfaction.”

“Yes, at least.”

“I knew he was mentally ill after one week with him.”

“How?”

Her mother sighed again. “We were on our honeymoon and Rudgear thought a man at a table in the restaurant was staring at him, and he got up in the middle of dinner and left.”

“He still thinks people are staring at him.”

“Then he wouldn’t speak to me for the rest of the night or the next day. He turned into an icicle. It was terrible.”

“Yeah, it must have been,” said Veblen, recalling one of her adult encounters with her father.

It was a visit not long after she moved into the cottage on Tasso Street, when she was still fixing it up. And only the second time she’d seen him as an adult. He came dressed in a jacket and tie and took her to lunch at an upscale restaurant on University Avenue, acting almost like it was a date, and brought her a gift that day, an
appliance purporting to save a VCR from overuse. (She still had one.) In other words, when a video ended, you were supposed to haul out this electric piece of junk and plug it in and rewind your video in it. To make it all the more horrible, Rudgear had purchased an accessory for the gadget, a red-striped vinyl cover.

“Gee,” Veblen had said, “thanks.” Why not have a separate refrigerator that precools your food to save the real refrigerator? Or an electric box that gets your food hot before you waste the oven? Or sheets to put over the main sheets, or towels to wrap around the main towels, what the heck. How about getting another one of these rewinders to save
this
rewinder? Commerce was based on so many miserable, hoodwinking ideas that the device depressed her, but she tried to hide what she felt.

As Rudgear knelt to plug in the unwanted rewinder, he had to fiddle with the VCR and DVD cords, which had been shoved behind the small crate on which Veblen’s TV was balanced. She noticed he was sweating and told him not to worry, that she’d get one of those power strips and plug it in later.

“I can’t do this,” Rudgear said suddenly. He stood and brushed himself off, his face pallid and damp. “How can you live like this?”

“Like what?”

“Like—some kind of drug addict! I gotta go. I gotta go!”

He moved for the door, struggling with the handle, so agitated he could barely turn the knob. She placed a gentle hand on his back and told him not to worry, she was still fixing it up, that it was going to be nice, that he should sit down and have some coffee with her. But he grabbed the doorknob with both hands, ripping it open, kicking wide the screen door, tripping down the steps. He
bolted for his car, threw himself in with a slam. She pelted the window with her palms.