The Portable Veblen (43 page)

In May the pool-riffle channel was nearly dry. But it was clear that in times of high water this was a conduit for a great volume of organic debris. She felt fortunate to live near such an active riparian corridor.

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you very much.”

Why had this squirrel attached to her, taken such an interest? What did he want? What did he see?

All at once she could hear Bill’s voice calling to Rudgear, just around the bend. And the squirrel leaped from the outcropping and ran past her, unearthing clumps of sediment and mulch.

“Rudge, you gave us a scare! My kid’s got a condition, he’s mentally disabled! He didn’t mean anything. He’s a five-year-old in the body of a man!”

She jumped to her feet and sprang over the rocks.

“He’s not all there?” Rudgear was saying.

“No. He’s not all there,” said Bill.

“I didn’t think so. You can tell a kid like that a mile away.”

They came into view, and Veblen saw Bill attempting to help Rudgear up the rocky embankment, holding him by his bandaged arm.

“He has a hard time keeping his hands to himself, it’s beyond his control. We need your help getting through this wedding. I want my wife to feel the joy of having her other son married. I don’t want stress, and if you could help us with Justin we’d be grateful.”

She came up behind, to lend a hand. “Well done,” she said.

Rudgear said, “I’m no good at anything!”

“Come on, Dad, you’re doing great.”

“Veblen, maybe you could get behind him and give him a boost.”

She braced herself against Rudgear’s backside, as Bill pulled on his hands from above.

“I didn’t go to Nam, but my brother died there,” Bill said, grunting.

“Your brother,” repeated Rudge.

“Died at Phu Ninh,” said Bill.

“You home when they came?”

“Yep,” said Bill.

“Betcha your folks were never the same,” said Rudge.

“That is correct,” said Bill.

“It’s hard on a family when you have a handicapped,” Rudgear said, as Veblen pushed.

“Wouldn’t trade it for the world.”

“My brother was handicapped,” her father said, as they struggled upward, almost to the top.

“I never knew you had a brother!” Veblen said.

“He died when I was eight. My mother wouldn’t let me say his name.”

“That’s hard,” said Bill.

“She never got over it.”

“Sorry, man,” said Bill.

“She was never the same.”

Rudgear wheezed as he crested the bank.

Bill put his arm around Rudgear to lead him back.

“I could see making a raft and riding it down to the salt flats, couldn’t you, Rudge?” said Bill.

“Give the frog a loan,” Rudgear said.

“Whatever you say,” said Bill.

“Knick knack paddy whack, give the frog a loan.”

“Rudge, you’d better get your ass in gear for your daughter’s wedding,” Bill said.

“I can’t remember the joke.”

“Did you hear me?” Bill said.

Rudge grunted.

“Dad?” Veblen said. “I never knew you had a brother before, that’s sad. What was his name?”

Rudgear was breathing heavily, and he didn’t reply.

“I just want to know, since he would’ve been my uncle,” Veblen pushed him.

“His name was Hugh! Stop talking about it. What’s the point?”

“Okay,” she said. “Thanks for telling me.”

Rudgear said, “My daughter wrote me a letter when she was five years old. It said,
There are no monkeys in the world.
That was the whole letter.”

“I did?” Her voice cracked.

“Veblen is profound, we know that much,” said Bill, giving her a nod.

•   •   •

R
UDGEAR FRESHENED UP
and got hydrated, and was in better form by the time Melanie and Linus arrived in the late afternoon. He strutted from the cottage on Tasso Street to greet them at the curb, and Veblen took out her camera because it was the first time in her life she’d seen her biological parents together, which she’d always told herself didn’t mean anything to her, but now somehow it did, if only for the record. Rudgear tapped into a dormant
reserve of suave, and to her amazement took Melanie’s hand as she rose from the car and kissed it. Then her mother didn’t wipe off her hand or call him a pompous ass, but rather smiled and embraced him, and Linus had to come around and intrude on the reunion to introduce himself, which also went well. Rudgear and Linus shook hands like men who had shared a hardship.

Both men had shiny pates. “I see we have the same barber,” said Rudge, and Linus let out a convivial hoot.

Bill turned chicken brochettes on the barbecue in the back that evening, under the shaggy, sap-oozing pine. The evening was lovely. The warm light of late afternoon blued after the sun dipped behind the coastal ranges. Around them the sycamores, liquid amber, and magnolias darkened. Leaves rustled, and Veblen went in for a wrap.

As she conveyed items in and out her back door, she sampled the conversations around her:

“I want to make sure we have enough put away when we move forward with a child,” said Uma Borg.

“We rarely dine out,” said Melanie.

“Mostly spy novels,” Donald Chester was saying.

“How much does a polar bear weigh?” Rudgear was saying to Caddie Fladeboe, who wore a voluminous grand boubou with gold embroidery, and had her hair in a stylish turban.

“How much?”

“I hope enough to break the ice.”

“My dad worked for 3M, we had enough Scotch tape around the house to mummify everybody in Minneapolis,” said Marion.

“The guy turned into a monster and I split. He’s confused about women in general,” said Caddie Fladeboe.

“Marching band,” said Linus. “I had an all-star silver bugle with a leaky spit valve.”

“Our name comes from Friesland, in the Netherlands,” Paul was saying. “It’s famous for the Friesian horse.”

Hans Borg said, “You’d have to say Frank Gehry. Really, you would.”

“Dear, would you bring me some water?” asked Melanie. “Room temperature?”

“I got to the point where I’d cut an apple in half, then couldn’t decide which half to eat first,” Rudgear was telling Albertine.

“I’m going to marry Veblen,” Justin was saying quietly to a downspout.

“Everyone, I’d like to make a toast,” said Bill, raising his glass. “In the words of the late great Frank Zappa: ‘If you end up with a boring miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, or some guy on TV telling you how to do your crapola, then you deserve it
.
’ Paul and Veblen, I think you’ll understand me when I say that we’ll always be here for you, but that your own crapola is where it’s at. Right, everyone?”

“Yes! Here’s to Veblen and Paul! Hooray!”

During the evening Veblen got stomach cramps and ran back and forth to the bathroom, because she was sure that hours of forced merriment would backfire, and that someone would soon give vent to pent-up grief or rage. Paul hobbled in on his crutches at one point, and embraced her.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Intense, isn’t it?”

“It’s unreal.”

He hugged her warmly, and she could hear his steady heart.

Maybe she depended upon a disturbance—it was her role to assert calm. But her services weren’t required at this festivity, and Veblen had the distinct impression that everyone else was having a better time than she was. Why couldn’t she relax, inhabit her authentic self? It felt very strange indeed. Thoughts such as
What is it to inhabit a rich, twenty-first-century democratic society?
and
How can an inhabitant of such a society be more than the enactor of a role in a previously written script?
came to mind, but not quite. She was not the philosopher Richard Rorty. She was Veblen Amundsen-Hovda, and she didn’t process her thoughts that incisively. What she envisioned, how she saw progress, was hard to put into words. If she had to point to an ideal time in history, she might call it
a time when a shoebox mattered.
But how could you have solidarity with others when you thought in terms like that?

      27

S
EE
FOR
Y
OURSELF

“M
arry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, you will also regret it; marry or don’t marry, you will regret it either way.” So said Søren Kierkegaard, that rumpled, bewildered Dane.

Up the old La Honda Road, near the crest of the coastal ranges, the squirrel warmed in the sun while some of his offspring chattered nearby in the trees. As in a dream, he saw a plastic bag blowing up the ridge through the green and golden meadow, full of lupine and dandelion and filaree. It bounded over old stumps and bulging roots and rocks and stones and depressions, racing and halting, flattening and rising on a draft.

He blinked drowsily in the light. The bag blew into his tree, inflating and rising, spinning and twirling, then filled out with the certainty of flesh.

—
Ah! Son!

—Dad, are you okay?

—I need spectacles! I thought you were a plastic bag
.

The boy had grown a goatee and joined the Nutkinistas. The
squirrel didn’t like it, but a young man had to find his way.
“Death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people”
was what the boy had tagged on the bridge across the creek—just at the spot where the couple had agreed to this union.

That was in the chill of winter. Now it was a brighter day, the sun bounding toward the solstice. Not a gust or a cloud nor even a massive horde of his kind to stop them. The kits were living and loving. Jays and warblers spoke over one another, but not loud enough. Wasps built on the lengthening days, too busy to sting. Even the wildflowers were whispering. Or was that just the sound of his life-fuse burning down?

His old dad used to say:
No matter how well wound, the workings of the clock wind down.

—
So, meet for an early dinner, Dad?

—Since when do I take an early dinner?

It seemed a considerable number of folks had found their way to this spot, not to witness a disaster, but to cheer this couple on. They parked in a line along the narrow road, and marched upward, the men in pressed Hawaiian shirts with gray hair gathered in ponytails, the women in ethnic prints and ceramic jewelry.

The parents of the man wound ribbons around the branches and trunks of the trees, and placed flowerpots all around. The woman’s stepfather helped set up the chairs and tables on the ridge, and a few musicians arrived with their resonant wooden hulls to tune them. The woman’s friend brought up large artichoke soufflés in big rectangular pans, baked hams stuck with cloves, yeasty rolls. She had made a cream cheese–frosted carrot cake, three tiers tall.

Miss Veblen Amundsen-Hovda stood at the bottom of the
clearing, wearing her simple dress. She held a bouquet of small white rosebuds, and had lily of the valley in her hair.

The man took his place at the heart of the grove, still on crutches. Next to him was another man holding the simple silver ring that had been found in the gully. The musicians produced a pleasing tune, and the young woman turned and whispered to her mother at her side that she loved her.

The mother whispered back: “What am I going to do without you?”

“You still have me,” the woman said.

“It’ll never be the same,” said her mother.

“It’ll be okay, you’ll see,” she said, squeezing her mother’s hand. Then she let go, and advanced to the spot between the stumps.

•   •   •

T
HE SQUIRREL
had made his rounds the night before, stopping at the Wagon Wheel Motel on El Camino, in time to hear the mother say: “Maybe Paul is better than we think.”

“Maybe so,” said her man, who kissed her shoulder.

“Linus. What’s got into you?”

“I guess it’s the motel room, it brings back memories.”

She laughed. “We’ve had some fun, haven’t we?”

“I believe so.”

“She and Paul must have a terrific sex life, or none of this would be happening.”

“Could be,” said Linus, snapping out of his reverie.

“Rudge looks awful,” Melanie said.

“Did he ever look good?”

“He used to be a very attractive person. It’s shocking. It’s the medications that hollow you out like that. He shook your hand?”

“He did,” said the man. “A fairly firm handshake.”

“Veblen doesn’t look anything like him, does she? She looks much more like me.”

“Very much so. She has your smile, your eyes.”

“I’m sorry we didn’t have much of a wedding,” said the mother, reaching for her husband of many years. “I wasn’t sure it was going to last, remember how provisional I thought it all was?”

The man nodded. “And have you gotten used to me yet?”

“Yes, dear.”

“Have I turned out how you hoped?”

The mother’s throat lumped up. She might well wonder if she’d truly reciprocated all the kindness and love he’d shown her, and if she could ever catch up.

“You didn’t even want to marry me. You thought I was a dud,” the man chided.

“No!”

“You thought I was a square, not your type. You liked the early Jack Nicholson type. The dangerous guys.”

“Sometimes you don’t know what’s your type until it finds you.”

That was enough. The squirrel moved to the room in which the man’s elders were staying. There, before him, stood the groom in tears, embracing his mother and his father in a confessional and cathartic moment at its peak. The older brother was joining them; the groom was letting him in.

Well. He took a deep breath and moved on.

In the course of observing the goings-on at the Wagon Wheel that night, in between several mealy oak nuts, he also witnessed
the man known as Rudgear trying to run away twice, requiring the groom’s elders to guard his door. And later, he saw the older brother struggling with the elders, and he had to be tied to the bed and injected with alprazolam. It had not been an easy night for anyone.

The officiant began to speak. Everyone settled. The woman turned to the man between the sacred stumps, on a bed of redwood sorrel, with a long view of the cobalt sea.