The Portable Veblen (41 page)

“Dad’s all over it,” Paul said. “He’s got some hotshot activist lawyer on the case.”

“I know. And that guy James Shalev wants to write about it.”

“Oh my god.” Paul rubbed his temples fiercely. “He has guts.”

“Paul, you know what? A couple of nights ago, I had an outburst with my mother. I kind of attacked her.” She said it almost proudly.

“Oh no!”

“And yesterday, I was talking to you before you were conscious, and I said some stuff your parents overheard, and they’re upset too.”

He looked surprised. “No one could blame you for being stressed out.”

“You think? I don’t feel myself, upsetting people.”

Paul struggled to sit up more, but managed only to lift his head. “Oh, look, a squirrel!” he cried happily, pointing into the oak outside the window.

Sure enough, leaves were scattering under the rush of a squirrel’s feet down the long arm of the oak, and Paul was smiling at the sight of it.

“Paul, you seem totally different. You hate squirrels.”

“You think I have brain damage?”

As a matter of fact, she was starting to wonder.

“I don’t think it’s brain damage,” Paul said soberly. “But we’ll make sure. I’m having some realizations, that’s all.”

“Really?”

His brow wrinkled sensibly. “Do you know what Jonas Salk said when he was asked if he’d patented the polio vaccine? He said, ‘Can you patent the sun?’ The idea of a patent was shocking to him. What humility! I feel like—maybe I’ve been on the wrong track.” His voice cracked, and he swallowed and pushed back into his pillow. “I can’t explain it, it’s like someone turned a fire hose on me. All these slimy layers of meaninglessness are coming off. Why shouldn’t you talk to squirrels?” he said, with a faraway look in his eyes. “You know what happened to me a long, long time ago?”

“What?”

“Well.” He rubbed his eyes. “Now I’m nervous. What if you don’t believe me?”

“Try it.”

“Okay.” He tried to push himself up on his elbows. “Once, seriously, I’m not kidding—I heard snails
scream
.”

“Really?”

Paul nodded. “When I was a kid.”

“What did it sound like?” Veblen asked, with great curiosity. Snails had a lot to scream about. “Sort of like a hiss?”

“No.”

“Kind of a slurp?”

He tried to re-create it, clenching his jaw, his breath squeezing past his tonsils.

“Wild.” Veblen laughed.

“You believe it?” he croaked.

“Sure, screaming snails. Of course!”

“Don’t break up with me right away,” he said suddenly. “Give me another chance, okay?”

      22

T
HE
M
AN
-S
QUIRREL
D
EBATE

O
nce in her readings of William James, Veblen had come across an anecdote that greatly irritated her. Professor James had gone on a camping trip with a cohort of his brainy friends, and upon returning from a solitary hike found them all in heated conversation around the campfire. It seemed there was a squirrel clinging to the trunk of the large sheltering tree at their site, but no matter how fast one of them went around the tree to catch a glimpse, the squirrel moved too, always keeping the tree between himself and the nuisance.

“Does the man go round the squirrel or not?”
was the heavy metaphysical question in dispute.

Some of the geniuses said that of course the man went around the squirrel. The tree was fixed. The man went around it. Period.

But the rest of the experts said that as long as the squirrel
rotated on the trunk, keeping its belly pointed at the man, then the man never did go “round” him.

James, ever the reasonable one, the humanist supreme, settled everyone down by pointing out that the key to the dispute lay in what “go round” meant in the most practical fashion. And on this they all agreed. The agreement laid the groundwork for pragmatism and ordinary language philosophy and future camping trips, this strange accord from the “unlimited leisure of the wilderness.”

Yet Thorstein Veblen, an admirer of James who would have read this essay published in 1907, might well have wondered what James meant by the unlimited leisure of the wilderness, and might have asked for no shuffling evasion about explaining it.

The Brahmins were splitting hairs about the words “go round” while a squirrel was taking care not to be roasted on a spit for dinner. Since when is this unlimited leisure?

Even James, the great empathist, had his blind spots.

William Morris, her mother’s hero, had blind spots. He was seen as effete and ridiculous by Professor Veblen after he paid Morris a visit in England. Veblen came home and blasted Morris’s Kelmscott Press and the whole Arts and Crafts movement for producing overly precious items for the wealthy, the only ones who could afford them—
decadent aestheticism,
he called it.

Veblen himself was flawed. By god, he could breathe only from one nostril! He must have snored terribly. And he didn’t like dogs. How could he not like dogs? And he did his dishes in a bathtub with a hose!

Yes, everybody had blind spots and flaws, and she knew how to ignore others’ blind spots and flaws. While she was by temperament very forgiving to others, she was not inclined to be generous
to herself. Nothing offended her more than her own faults, which seemed to be revealing themselves lately with alarming frequency. She was muted and superstitious, stunted and weak, and if she spent much more time thinking about it, she’d have a list that rolled out the door on a scroll. There was no perfect being out there, accepting, intelligent, kind, creative, full of life and appetite.
Muckraker, carouser, sweet-toothed, lion-hearted.

Or was there?

      23

H
ELLO
IN
T
HERE

W
ithin the week, Paul was out of the hospital and back at his apartment in Mountain View to recuperate. Bill and Justin had returned to Garberville; Marion was most suited to nursing Paul. He was gaining strength and appetite rapidly, and Marion cooked for him and picked up his prescriptions and helped him remember what had to be taken when, but he was eager to be independent again, to have the space to think.

Veblen would stop by every day and visit, but mostly she and Paul talked on the phone, like people just getting to know each other. When they talked, Veblen would stand at her front window, watching a tall slender palm down the road sway like a colossal cattail. The palm would hypnotize her, taking her away to a world where human solidarity prevailed.

Her mother was leaving her alone for a change. It was remarkable how little time she’d spent worrying about the fight they’d had when Paul was in the hospital, and how little damage control
she’d indulged in since. But after a few days had gone by, Veblen longed to talk to her again, and called.

Her mother answered immediately.

“Mom?”

“Yes, Veblen.”

Veblen said, “Mom, I’m sorry I yelled at you at the hospital, and I hope everything’s okay.”

Melanie sniffed. “I can understand you were under a lot of duress,” said her mother, picking up without evident melodrama. “How are you feeling now?”

“Okay,” Veblen said. “So you’re not mad?”

“I was hurt and disappointed,” her mother said. “But I’ve put it behind me. How is Paul?”

“He’s good, just a little tired.”

“Tired in what way? Is he keeping food down?”

“Yes. His head hurts, and so do his ribs and his leg.”

“He needs to start physical therapy right away.”

“He started, don’t worry.”

“What’s happening with the attorney?”

“She says it’s likely Cloris won’t be charged with any criminal offense for the accident. But she’s going to help Paul with the whistle-blower stuff,” Veblen said. They proceeded to discuss how this would impact Paul’s career, and Veblen was able to tell her mother that through the efforts of Dr. Chaudhry, Stanford wanted him back. But whether Paul would accept was another story.

“And what about the wedding?” Melanie asked.

“We’ll see,” Veblen simply said.

“His parents have been very civil to me. I know that’s not the point, but it meant a lot to me,” Melanie said. “Marion called the
other day to see if I was all right and we talked about the stress you’re under. I don’t know when anybody’s shown that kind of consideration for me in years.”

“What about Linus?”

“
Besides
Linus. And you, of course.”

“Well, good,” Veblen said.

“I know you’ve been very busy, but you haven’t heard anything further about my trial, have you?”

“No.”

“I hope this isn’t a pipe dream,” Melanie said, sighing.

“Don’t you have a better pipe dream than that?” Veblen accused, and her mother actually chuckled.

“I wish I did, dear. Wait till you’re my age.”

They talked a bit longer. Her mother wanted to hear about how Paul was coping with the everyday details of life with a broken arm and leg, and even inquired about the degree of chafing in his armpits. She also had been thinking a great deal about Veblen’s health and how she might be under a lot of strain. Through the blinds Veblen could see a light coming on in Donald Chester’s kitchen.

Hello in there.

•   •   •

T
HAT NIGHT,
Veblen dreamed about the wedding. She dreamed that they were standing on the ridge overlooking the great expanse of the Pacific, up near Skyline Drive, and that the earth began to rumble, but it wasn’t the work of the San Andreas Fault. Everywhere before her the fields and meadows were moving. All at once she saw squirrels, millions of them, running, shoulder to shoulder,
forming a huge blanket, as far as the eye could see, one of those vast migrations that had been noted across the continent by settlers and pioneers. Squirrels began to pour through the clearing where they stood, around the guests, making them scream, and all the while Veblen was calling out to calm them:
“They’re only moving on! It’s all right! They’re moving on!”

When she awoke her muscles were sore, as if she’d been running in the stampede.

      24

D
OOMED
TO
W
ONDER

Y
ear upon year in Garberville, in the spring near noon, the sun will pour through the front windows of the Vreelands’ house and illuminate the bookshelf, where sits a portrait of Bill Vreeland’s brother Richard. Not the portrait of the marine in his dress blues who stood at attention on the mantel at Bill and Richard’s parents’ house in San Diego from 1966 until their residue was boxed up in the nineties, but one of Rich skateboarding in a striped T-shirt and cut-offs down a hill near the high school. This year, Justin was studying it intently when all at once he began to wail, “He’s
gone
! He’s
goooooone
!” and pound on his skull. Bill could normally talk him out of his outbursts, but this one went out of control. As Justin howled, Marion, who had only just returned from a week taking care of Paul, rushed to embrace him, but he pushed her back against the bookcase, and her wrist was not broken but deeply bruised.

Bill had to bind Justin’s arms with a canvas strap that he didn’t like using at all, and gave him some sedation, which he also
didn’t like to do, and then they had to decide if they should take him to his day group or not, and since the car ride to town usually soothed him, they thought they’d give it a try despite the tumult, and by the time they reached town he was docile, and after he went in without a hitch they sat outside on a redwood bench and Marion cried.

“I want to take care of him as long as I can,” she said, rubbing her twisted wrist.

Bill watched a dragonfly land on his leg in the sun. “We need to have a plan. Someday we won’t be here for him. And before that, there’s going to be a day when we’re not up to it anymore. It kills me to say that, you know that, don’t you?”

She sniffed. “Who would fly his Banana-57 into the room every morning? Who would make his cinnamon toast the way he loves it? Who would help him get all the threads away from his toes in his socks? Who would pull up the tongue in his shoes? Who will care enough? No one will care as much as we do!”

“I think we need to decide
where
.” Bill rubbed his beard with the back of his hand, then bounced his hand on its spring action. “That’s all I’m saying.”

They remained on the bench in stillness, as if catching their breath for whatever came next.

Bill thought about the blood he’d noticed a few times in his urine, wondering if he should tell his doctor, and then he thought about his mother’s death ten years ago, and of wrestling her rings off her cold knuckles in that eerie, silent room.

Marion thought about the day Justin was born. After all her pot smoking, trying to find herself in movement and music, the world lurched in a new direction, and she’d never looked back.

In a while the members of Justin’s group came outside for their walk. Justin was paired with a woman named Alice who had Down syndrome, and he and Alice were holding hands.

They rested in the sun. Marion believed in lightness. For his part, Bill considered this a time for atonement, and never scheduled a thing but an hour on the bench.

Buried in the folds of the past was a candlelit room in the communal dome where they’d all lived, with Caddie Fladeboe and Cool Breeze and the rest of them, all young and sure, waiting as Marion withstood labor, dabbing her with sponges and proclaiming her beautiful, and she bearing up like all earth mothers had done before the modern medical system denatured the birthing process beyond recognition. They massaged and coached her to push and push and push and push and push, and Justin arrived after forty-two hours with a cord around his neck, blue.

Some said it was meant to be, that all the moments of their lives that led to the decision to have him at home were part of his legacy, and that they mustn’t blame themselves, but Bill struggled. He relied on modernity in other ways. By now he had a cell phone, he had a car, he loved the Internet, he wasn’t thoroughly medieval. Why had he insisted on being medieval at the birth of his child?