The Cardiff Giant

by Lockridge, Larry

  Homero? Hard to believe I ever feared he was shtupping Sheila. This is enough to remind us that the skeptical temper with respect to matters normal and paranormal doesn’t always keep the yellow demons at bay. For all our gray matter, we live in a world of illusion. And we may fail in matters of the heart. But Homero too prevailed in the end and, as I write, is living happily ever after. He pined so much on the steps of the Baseball Hall of Fame that the baseball commissioner reconsidered, and after ample consultation with his Ouija board, admitted Homero. Go read the plaque. But for Homero, baseball was remote history. He bailed also from the scaffolding business and, with some venture capital, started the now famed Homero Tango Institute, which holds annual international tango competitions attended by celebs the world over. The HTI Table Top Tango trophy is particularly treasured.

  Tarbox simply disappeared one day.

  Life in the city has been good for us two couples and kids. Sheila gave up her position at Glimmerglass for the same work as designer at the Metropolitan Opera. She and Esther get together for lunch every three weeks or so, often at the Boathouse in Central Park, where they watch the swans and rowboats and ponder everything from child-raising and discount drugstores to botany and Jewish burials. They rise above the petty sibling jealousies I’ve documented with some embarrassment in this history. I can’t say I’ve become close to Deronda, who doesn’t get my jokes, but I respect his doggedness and enterprising nature as well as his extraordinary fiddling. His klezmer bluegrass suggests to me a deep truth about how human beings can contain contradictory multitudes, often latent powers that well up on occasion, surprising, ennobling.

  My newspaper focuses on urban-environment issues but has a weekly supplement devoted to cosmology and astrophysics. Far from emulating Ohnstad’s skepticism with respect to all matters beyond experiment and direct observation, I’ve made my compromise with Sheila and Esther, who seek a spiritual dimension in things—often, as we’ve seen, at their peril. I’ve taken up integral yoga and dine once a month with Sheila at Souen, a macrobiotic restaurant. Because it doesn’t believe in disinfectants, Souen is often closed down by the Department of Health but always gets back in business.

  It’s really in cosmology where I find a spiritual turn of the screw. The East Village Other is so taken up with garbage removal, rent stabilization, urban blight, and ozone that, in my editor’s column, I like to remind the readership of worlds elsewhere. I discovered cosmology many years ago while reading Einstein in Love, which I had mistaken for an account of the scientist’s sex life. There was little on sex but much on how mind at its highest pitch begins to understand the cosmos. If our blue dot in space becomes opaque in time through the greenhouse effect or some other human malfeasance, there’s the consolation that this particular universe of at least 125 billion galaxies must contain planets that are doing a better job of it. This stands to reason, though there’s no direct evidence. The unfathomable infinity of space, the unspeakable stretch of time, the wonder of the firmament—all answer to whatever vestige I have of a sense of the miraculous. And much of it is spooky too, like the demise of one photon linked to the demise of another, even if they are whizzing off toward different galaxies.

  Bertrand Russell once opined that philosophy is that branch of speculation that hasn’t yet been replaced by science. Okay, Bertie, but in cosmology we find science still engaged in speculation, trying to explain a huge amount of resistant stuff.

  So what’s the difference between cosmology and a belief in the paranormal? Tough question—and don’t expect a convincing answer from a mere journalist when Carl Sagan couldn’t come up with one. But consider human presumption: Cosmologists, unlike the horoscope gang, don’t imply it all exists for our sake—we’re not sure where we stand in the nature of things. And cosmologists reluctantly say goodbye to their incandescent theories if Mother Nature extinguishes them with the wet blanket of counter-evidence.

  * * *

  One day in October, ten years after the events of 2003, the four of us were invited by Ohnstad, on elegant hotel stationery, to spend the weekend at the Otesaga, at his expense and for old time’s sake—and Deronda should bring his fiddle. We hadn’t seen him in years. There was some debate as to whether we should accept, but curiosity got the better of us, and we left the kids with nannies. What did Ohnstad have up his sleeve this time? Do people ever truly reform? He had long since finished his community service gig at the Farmers’ Museum and given up all hope of higher office. For all we knew he was simply minding his accounts and settling into wealthy, corpulent late middle age.

  We drove up to Cooperstown in Deronda’s refurbished Duesenberg, no longer a Studebaker, with Esther at the wheel driving in her customary manner—turning a four-hour journey into three-with Deronda as usual cowering in the backseat.

  Have you noticed that this screed has been a meditation on identity? I can safely say that some things never change about the people we know, from preschool to the grave. Esther will always be a reckless driver, just as she must have been a reckless toddler.

  We were to meet in a pavilion erected for the occasion behind the hotel. Leaving the limousine in the parking lot, we walked through the portico and out the lobby to the expansive porch behind, overlooking the lake where the phantoms of Cooper’s novels flit about at night. Some thirty yards below was a newly erected pavilion, modeled on the exhibition tent of 1869 that had first housed the Cardiff Giant. Hotel staff were scurrying to and fro, toting champagne and hors d’oeuvres into the pavilion entrance. From a distance we could see an unusually tall woman standing at the entrance, bossily instructing them.

  “Ohnstad seems to have hired an Amazonian social director,” I whispered to my three companions as we approached the pavilion.

  “Sheila! Esther! Jack! Danny! Wasn’t expecting you for another hour—I’ve hardly had time to fix my face!” She was wearing a long scarlet gown, décolleté with sequins, and high heels, as if she weren’t already tall enough.

  “Sorry, where is Mr. Ohnstad?” I asked, puzzled that this stranger was already addressing us by first names. There was something uncanny about her. I did a quick inventory of her long horsy face. The women beat me to it.

  “Thor! It’s you!” they cried simultaneously.

  “Wanted you to be the first to know, dearies,” said Ohnstad. “Took many surgeries and lots of hormones, but how do you like my new look?”

  “You look great!” said Esther.

  “A real improvement, Thor,” said Sheila. They both gave him a hug.

  I thought he looked like a female Seabiscuit but held my tongue.

  “Call me Arlene,” said Ohnstad.

  “So you’ve invited us up for the coming-out?” I asked. “We’re honored, Thor—I mean, Arlene.”

  “Yes, but it’s more than that, lovelies. I’m announcing my engagement. You’ll meet him shortly. Let’s catch up first. Dario, do bring the champagne tout de suite, and hurry up with the hors d’oeuvres, s’il vous plait.” She snapped her fingers.

  Other guests were arriving. We may have been in Arlene’s inner circle but this was a public festival. Sure enough, setting up cameras at the far end of the pavilion were Tabby and Harris with their crew, ten years older than when we last saw them. Harris had the same oily hairpiece and Tabby the same face-lift, maybe three times re-upholstered—and both had the same Chiclets and receding gums. I repeat, some things abide the flux of time.

  “Let’s face it,” began Arlene when we’d rounded up chairs and settled down into yet another pro-seminar, “I wasn’t very good at being a man . . . so I surveyed the alternatives.”

  I wondered if he—no she—had been eating lots of starchy foods.

  “Spending a night in jail with three pigs made me think I’d taken a wrong turn somewhere.”

  “Yes, many wrong turns, like getting involved with me,” said Sheila. “You know, Arlene, I’ve had some bad feelings about listening to that psychic and calling the whole thing off. But you know, I don
’t think it was going to work out anyway. Sorry you got so unhinged over it, obsessing and siccing other guys on me. That was as crazy as my thinking I was a heron.”

  “I agree, dear,” said Arlene. “I was a textbook case in abnormal psychology and you were in a hypnotic trance. But I must say, it worked out in the long run. Look here at Jack—you owe him to me, dear. At least I get some of the credit, don’t I, Jack?”

  “Not sure I get any of it,” I replied. “You get the credit, Arlene, but I’m not sure what you’re going to do with it.”

  “I’m investing in the future,” she replied flatly.

  It had long ago occurred to me that Ohnstad’s crazed revenge on the paranormal had borne some fruit despite his exposure and defeat in the end. Esther had backed away from Kabbalah for mainstream Judaism and Sheila had renounced baloney for botany. Deronda and I had stepped in where Ohnstad had trod, both of us living happily ever after. Surely he had some entitlement to a future.

  “So what’s in the cards?” I asked her.

  “For starters, meet my fiancé.” She snapped her fingers.

  We were promptly joined by a stout, presentable late middle-aged man wearing a costly, rumpled, dark linen suit and a silk tie with an animalist motif. He was sipping a kir.

  “Haven’t we met somewhere before?” I asked. I peered into eyes that peered into mine as in a dream many years ago. Again, the women beat me to it.

  “Tarbox!” they cried simultaneously. “You’ve changed!”

  “Good evening, ladies,” said Tarbox. “Yes, I’ve changed, thanks to Arlene here. She put me through an extreme makeover. Those Queer Eye for the Straight Guy guys showed up one day. Then lots of plastic surgery, new duds, speech lessons, I sold my pigs, lost the election, learned how to read and tango, changed my politics. Now I’m doing work on the net.”

  “Oh, you’re still catching aliens?” I asked. “I’m so grateful to you for catching Sheila with that net.”

  “No, the worldwide net. I gave up on aliens long ago and took up fishing. Me and Arlene met through the Cooperstown Dating Service.”

  “But you’d already been doing business together for years,” I observed.

  Arlene raised her left eyebrow. “Yes, lovelies, but neither of us knew with whom we were dealing. When we met up at the Blue Mingo Grill, we had a good laugh. Of course I’d gone through my own extreme makeover by then and was forced to tell Barry who I was. I was still eight inches taller.”

  “Me and Arlene—uh, I mean, Arlene and I hit it off,” said Tarbox. “I was disappointed at first ’cause she didn’t know how to can.”

  “But I reminded him that I had ample funds,” said Arlene, “and we really wouldn’t need to lay in provisions for the winter months.”

  “So will your name be Arlene Tarbox?” Deronda asked Ohnstad.

  “No, I got my name changed,” interjected the former pig farmer.

  “Yes, meet Baron Turbot,” said Arlene. “My name will be Arlene Ohnstad-Turbot. Let me tell you more about all this, if you’re interested. With your permission, Esther, I must dip into abnormal psychology yet again. Baron has already heard all this, but no matter.”

  “Please, Arlene,” said Esther. “We’re all ears.”

  “Very well, lovelies. You’ll remember I was quite undone by Sheila’s giving me walking papers on advice of that psychic.”

  “Don’t rub it in.”

  “And then I fell into trying to make love to her by proxies, blokes like you, Jack.”

  “Pardon my own psychology,” interjected Esther, “but maybe it was your way of dealing with loss and jealousy—you were still in charge. Not so odd, really.”

  “Remember, you’re a control freak,” Sheila added.

  “Okay, okay. But it felt odd. I was aroused by my jealousy . . .”

  “Prurience and castration go hand in glove,” pitched in Esther. “I think Freud has something on that somewhere.”

  “But what I’ve not confessed is that I was identifying with Sheila, not with the men, seeing these male invaders from the female point of view. It was arousing. I tried to take up residency in her body. In my mind’s eye, that is.” Arlene hadn’t fully worked out some voice-pitch issues and was going back and forth irritatingly between falsetto and basso.

  She continued, “After my exposure and disgrace at Hyde Hall—”

  “Don’t forget my pigs.”

  “Yes, and after conversing in jail with Baron’s three castrated pigs, I pondered who I was. I couldn’t walk down the street anywhere without people pointing and saying things like ‘There goes the pervert!’ or ‘How’s life at the Farmers’ Museum, Mr. Ohnstad?’ or ‘Serves you right, goddam atheist.’ I thought of growing a beard, changing my name and hair color, and moving to another part of the country. Then I hit on a sex change. Maybe I was all along a woman trapped in a man’s body.”

  Arlene caught my eyes rolling. “Yes, Jack, it’s a cliché but no less true for that.”

  Okay, I could grant the occasional truth of clichés. And frankly, it seemed doubly confirmed by now that the psychic had been right to warn Sheila away from Ohnstad. I remembered too that his obsession with her had become my own, like an infection. I had felt the dark arousal of envy and jealousy and their assault on my identity. I had been in a delusional state of mind.

  Well, there was one difference between Ohnstad and me—I had never taken up residence, in thought or deed, in a female body. Guess I’m an unregenerate hetero.

  “Now, Arlene,” said Esther, knowing she might be raising a sensitive issue, “what was there about Baron that was so compelling? Not that he doesn’t cut quite a figure on the dance floor, but, uh . . .” This was, of course, a question lurking in all our minds. I must say that neck-flap reduction, jowl and double-chin removal, rhinoplasty, hair implants, and a tummy tuck had done wonders for this pig farmer. Still, who would’ve thunk it? Ohnstad’s making do with Tarbox could not have been flattering to Sheila and Esther, former girlfriends now scratching their heads.

  “I felt we deserved each other,” said Arlene and left it at that. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, lovelies, we should say hello to some of our other guests.” She lumbered off while Baron Turbot waddled beside her. Those walks, at least, hadn’t changed for the better.

  I surmised—and Esther later agreed—that courting Tarbox must have been some sort of self-flagellation. But whatever his motives, Ohnstad had gone to work on this unpromising pig farmer and refashioned him. I repeat, people never completely change their identities despite all this talk of reinvention. Any particular Jack-in-the-Pulpit switches sex depending on its annual starch reserves but remains, it seems to me, the same plant. Tarbox was now Turbot, but if one peered closely one could perceive the Tarbox within. Same with Arlene. Thor was there. Yet the partial transformations stirred me to reflect cheerfully on our human will to fashion a different and better life.

  Two hundred guests feasted on poached turbot and champagne as the atmosphere became more and more buoyant. Sheila, Esther, and I, if not Deronda, were pretty much sloshed when Arlene chimed her goblet and requested silence. Oh crap, here comes another speech.

  “Baron and I wish to thank all of you for coming. First we’d like to announce our engagement and invite you to the wedding, to take place on Halloween one year from now in the country church at the Farmers’ Museum. I’ll be given away by the Cardiff Giant.”

  Laughter.

  “You are our two hundred most intimate friends. So I hope nobody will take offense if we single out Sheila Drake, Esther Federman, Jack Thrasher, and Danny Deronda for special thanks. Without the series of blunders, mishaps, and near-death experiences they made possible, I’d still be a man, and Baron and I might never have agreed to tie the knot.”

  Laughter.

  “And now we’d like to announce a new nonprofit initiative, the Institute for the Propagation of Considerable Skepticism Regarding All Evidentiary Claims for Paranormal Phenomena, the IPCSRECPP, pronounced ipcsr
ecpp. Baron declines to be a fellow but will serve as bailiff. So far, nobody’s signed up. Look, dearies, there are no dues; we pay you thirty dollars to join.”

  Muted applause.

  “And now, everybody, enough serious talk. I’d like to ask Danny to honor us with his fiddle!”

  “I should be willing so to do,” Deronda said politely, as he tucked the fiddle under his chin and instantly went into a klezmer bluegrass trance, the wailing and laughing sonorities echoing back from the far recesses of Otsego Lake. This time the Bulgar resulted in no square dancing, and though it wasn’t a Jewish wedding, the guests all followed Baron Turbot, who led off the circle dance, joining shoulders with Arlene who joined with Esther who joined with me who joined with Sheila. As was traditional, everyone imitated the steps of the leader, while the circle formed and broke and reformed. Baron had taken lessons in ballroom dancing but was still injecting jitterbug variations. “And this here’s the pas de basque,” he shouted, leaping and crossing his feet as the guests tried stumblingly to follow suit. Again, the transformation was only partial—Arlene was still given to lumbering and Baron to waddling. But ours was a forgiving company, and the engaged couple finished to loud applause as Arlene gave an awkward bow and Baron waved his stumpy arms in triumph.

  * * *

  Heading back to the city at breakneck speed thanks to Esther’s insouciant approach to space-time, we four reflected nervously on what we’d just witnessed. Sure enough, the women were put out. Each had early on rejected Ohnstad and even precipitated his crisis. But that any man aspiring to their person should have found a plausible fallback in Tarbox was a punch in the ribcage and a stick in the eye. At least this was, I believe, their response on a visceral level, not fully voiced.