We Are Still Married (36 page)

The flight had been bumpy, he said, but the time had gone by fast. He had eaten a roast-beef dinner, watched
Field of Dreams,
and read two chapters of a biography of Bob Dylan. “It's good you came out to the airport,” he said. “I forgot the name of the hotel. I wrote it on a slip of paper and then left it at the apartment.”

I asked him the classic fatherly question, a line that probably dates back to long before Hester Wilton's time: “What would you have done if I hadn't been here?” I recognized its classicism even as I said it.

“I'd have gone into the city and remembered it,” he said cheerfully.

A
LITTLE BUSINESS CALLED ME to San Francisco a few weeks ago, about two hours' worth of business that I managed to work up into a full two-day itinerary so as to justify the long flight, and then I flew out a day early to attend to my real business, which was a drive across the Golden Gate Bridge, and over Mount Tamalpais, along a boulevard of eucalyptus trees, to Stinson Beach, a village where I've spent four weeks in the past seven years and which I wanted to see again. Stinson Beach looks out on the Pacific from the foot of a mountain, and for seven years I have been pacified by visions of it. When I lie down at night, and night thoughts crowd in around me, and I am about to get up and spend the night looking out the window, I imagine a bright spring morning in Stinson Beach: the sandy path from a rented cottage over the dune to the beach, and me walking barefoot, the sound of high surf—and by the time I spread a towel on the sand and lie down on it morning has come and I get up and take a shower. The path is no more than sixty yards long, through tall pampas grass and a patch of dark-green succulents and two little jungles of flower garden, and yet it has served me so well so many nights—a short hike from the cool, dim house to the sea which takes me into a sweet sleep—that I wanted to see it again and commit it more clearly to memory.

I flew to San Francisco in the morning, wearing a pair of horn-rimmed glasses I had broken the day before by making a sharp right-hand turn into an iron pillar at the office. The pillar had not been there earlier. A carpenter friend of mine had glued the break—on the bridge, between the eyes—and I didn't think about it all the flight west over the mountains, the drive north into the city, until I got to a room in a hotel on Nob Hill, sat on the bed, and took the glasses off, and they broke in my hand.

Without my glasses on, I see San Francisco as a few objects in the foreground of a vast Abstract Expressionist world, not so different from Omaha or San Jose in the same circumstance—the Bay might be a bay or it might be soybeans, the Berkeley hills might be soybeans, the Golden Gate might be a storm on the horizon. So I hiked down the hill toward Market Street, feeling a little ill from lack of focus, and found a stationery store and bought a bottle of super-glue, found a restaurant, and sat down and ordered a cup of coffee and got busy repairing my glasses.

The directions that come with the little plastic container give a person pause—especially a very nearsighted one. “Warning,” they say. “BONDS SKIN INSTANTLY. CONTAINS CYANOACRYLATE ESTER. Avoid contact with skin and eyes. If eye or mouth contact occurs, hold eyelid or mouth open and flush with water only and GET MEDICAL ATTENTION. If finger bonding occurs, apply solvent.”

In order to see what I was doing, I had to hold the glue dropper and the glasses pretty close to my eyes, and the thought of the warning made me a little shaky. I wondered if I had any sort of personal identification on me. (“S.F.P.D. SEEKS IDENTITY OF VOICELESS MYOPIC PERSON WHO GLUED OWN MOUTH AND FINGERS SHUT, YESTERDAY.”) I squeezed one drop of glue on the right spot, bonded the glasses, then, putting the cap on the dropper, got a little glue on two fingers and, for one horrific second, instinctively tried to rub the stuff off and
felt my fingers bond,
then pulled them apart at the last moment! And sat for a few minutes until I recovered from the shock. I didn't touch the cup of coffee.

I put the glue bottle in my pocket and the glasses on my face, and walked two blocks to Powell Street and caught a cable car heading up Nob Hill. I stood on the forward right-hand running board, holding on to a pole, and when the driver sang out, “Hold it in on the right! Watch your back!” I leaned in toward an old woman sitting on the bench as we swept past a parked truck, its extended side-view mirror a few inches from my back.

The glasses held together for the drive across the Golden Gate and up the mountain and along the coast. The highway is a roller-coaster of a road, with plenty of dramatic curves that hang on the mountainsides over sheer drops, and in the event of sudden glasses breakage I was going to plant one lens in my right eye, like Erich von Stroheim, and keep going, but I simply hugged the right shoulder, avoided looking at the ocean far below and the tops of tall trees in the valleys (I have a mild form of acrophobia, feeling that if you look down from a great height mysterious ground forces will pull you over the edge), and cruised down into Stinson Beach, past the Sand Dollar restaurant and Ed's Superette, and into the parking lot at the beach. I got out and walked. Everything was there, as I have remembered it so many times: the beach houses on pilings, the dunes, the surf and surfers, the cottage where I stayed (its shades pulled), and the magical path. I stood by the cottage and looked at it for a long time. I heard, faintly, in the nearby surf, some voices from old vacations, including the shouts of an eight-year-old boy who is now fifteen. The sun shone down, and as I walked slowly up the path and over the dune I felt sorrow and danger recede into the ocean and thought I'd like to lie down on the sand and take a nap.

I am back from San Francisco now, with a clear image of the path in my head: the greens are
really
green, the air smells of real salt water, soft sand is underfoot. I also have two little patches of dried super-glue on my right thumb and index finger, clinging to my skin with a tensile strength of up to five thousand pounds per square inch. The strength of a clear image of a path leading to the ocean cannot be expressed in pounds, but I estimate that mine should be good for another two or three years of ordinary use.

O what a luxury it be
how exquisite, what perfect bliss
so ordinary and yet chic
to pee to piss to take a leak

 

to feel your bladder just go free
and open up the Mighty Miss
and all your cares float down the creek
to pee to piss to take a leak

 

for gentlemen of great physique
who can hold water for one week
for ladies who one-quarter cup
of tea can fill completely up
for folks in urinalysis
for Viennese and Greek and Swiss
for little kids just learning this
for everyone it's pretty great
to urinate

 

of course for men it's much more grand
women sit or squat
we stand
and hold the fellow in our hand
and proudly watch the mighty arc
adjust the range and make our mark
on stones or posts for rival men
to smell and not come back again

 

women are so circumspect
but men can piss to great effect
with terrible hydraulic force
can make a stream or change its course
can put out fires or cigarettes
and sometimes
laying down our bets
late at night outside the
bars
we like to aim up at the stars.

When I was seventeen I fell in love with Barbara Ann.
We sat together in the lunchroom. I held her hand.
Once I kissed her and she said, “That wasn't bad.”
Ours was not a great romance but it was all I had.
I was lonely. I was the weirdest kid in town,
Six foot three, a crewcut, a hundred and three pounds,
High-water pants and a goofy face—if only she could see
That down inside this cartoon boy was someone lovely: me.

 

One night I was standing by the candy store when she drove by

In a pink Cadillac with this rich handsome guy
On their way to the Prom—I couldn't bear to live!
How could she be so cruel to one so sensitive?
That night I made a vow
that someday I'd become
Rich and handsome, too, like him (the lousy bum!),
Well educated, suave of speech, a guy of style and grace,

And come straight back to Hoopersville and laugh right in her face.

 

And so I became and now I am and so the other day
I flew down in my Lear jet to visit Barbara A.
Got her address from her mom and drove out in my Porsche
And found her at her mobile home, hanging out her worsche.
She turned and saw me and she almost dropped her drawers—
“Is that really you, then! And is that sportscar yours?”

 

“It sure is!” I said and looked in those clear blue eyes
And suddenly I loved her more than I had realized.

“I love you,” I said. “Come, live with me. Marry me, my dear. ”

She turned and yelled, “Hey kids, wash up! let's go! your stepdad's here!”

There were seven filthy children with grimy feet and hands,

And crusts of dirt around their mouths and big loads in their pants,

Slimy lips and greasy hair and clothes of such bad taste,

I put my arms around them all and cried, “The Lord be praste!”

 

We hauled them to the laundromat and got them washed and shined

And were married the next morning, so I guess that love is blind.

I think we're pretty happy, and one thing I know for sure
Is that we love each other, O viva sweet lamour.
Lamour, lamour.
Oh yes we love each other and viva sweet lamour.

When we got home, it was almost dark.
Our neighbor waited on the walk.
“I'm sorry, I have bad news,” he said.
“Your cat, the gray-black one, is dead.
I found him by the garage an hour ago.”
“Thank you,” I said, “for letting us know.”

 

We dug a hole in the flower bed,
The lilac bushes overhead,
Where this cat loved to lie in spring
And roll in the dirt and eat the green
Delicious first spring buds,
And laid him down and covered him up,
Wrapped in a piece of tablecloth,
Our good old cat laid in the earth.

 

We quickly turned and went inside
The empty house and sat and cried
Softly in the dark some tears
For that familiar voice, that fur,
That soft weight missing from our laps,
That we had loved too well perhaps
And mourned from weakness of the heart:
A childish weakness, to regard
An animal whose life is brief
With such affection and such grief.

 

If this is foolish, so it be.
He was good company,
And we miss his gift
Of cat affection while he lived,
The sweet shy nature
Of that graceful creature
Who gave the pleasure of himself:
The memory of our cat, Ralph.

Of life's many troubles, I've known quite a few:
Bad plumbing and earaches and troubles with you,
But the saddest of all, when it's all said and done,
Is to look for your socks and find only one.
Here's a series of single socks stacked in a row.
Where in the world did their fellow socks go?

 

About missing socks, we have very few facts.
Some say cats steal them to use for backpacks,
Or desperate Norwegians willing to risk
Prison to steal socks to make lutefisk.
But the robbery theories just don't hold water:
Why would they take one and not take the odder?

 

Now,
some
people lose socks, and though you may scoff,
Some go to shows and have their socks knocked off.
Some use a sock to mop up spilled gin with
And some people had just one sock to begin with.
But for most missing socks, or sock migration,
Sockologists have no quick explanation.

 

Socks
are
independent, studies have shown,
And most feel a need for some time alone.
Some socks are bitter from contact with feet;
Some, seeking holiness, go on retreat;
Some need adventure and cannot stay put;
Some socks feel useless and just underfoot.
But whatever the reason these socks lose control,
Each sock has feelings down deep in its sole.

 

If you wake in the night and hear creaking and scraping,
It's the sound of a sock, bent on escaping.
The socks on the floor that you think the kids dropped?
They're socks that went halfway, got tired, and stopped.

 

It might help if, every day,
As you don your socks, you take time to say:
“Thank you, dear socks, for a job that is thankless.
You comfort my feet from tiptoes to ankless,
Working in concert, a cotton duet,
Keeping them snug and absorbing the sweat,
And yet you smell springlike, a regular balm,
As in Stravinsky's
Le Sacre du Printemps,
And so I bless you with all of my heart
And pray that the two of you never shall part.
I love you, dear socks, you are socko to me,
The most perfect pair that I ever did see.
I thank you and bless you now.
Vobiscum Pax.”
Then you bend down and put on your socks.

 

This
may
help, but you must accept
That half of all socks are too proud to be kept,
And, as with children, their leaving is ritual.
Half of all socks need to be individual.

“Function follows form,”
Said Louis Sullivan one warm
Evening in Chicago drinking beer.
His wife said, “Dear,
I'm sure that what you meant
Is that form should represent
Function. So it's function that should be followed.”
Sullivan swallowed
And looked dimly far away
And said, “Okay,
Form follows function, then.”
He said it again,
A three-word spark
Of modern arch-
Itectural brilliance
That would dazzle millions.
“Think I should write it down?”
He asked with a frown.
“Oh yes,” she said, “and here's a pencil.”
He did and soon was influential.