“Avoid August,” Troyer advised, relaxing a bit now, but still suspicious. “That’s when Obama comes. Him and all the other libs.”
Lincoln indicated the man’s Trump sign. “You wouldn’t actually vote for him, would you?”
Troyer snorted. “Nah. That’s just there to piss off the rest of Chilmark.” But then he shrugged. “On the other hand, if he gets the nomination, I just might.”
Lincoln felt a chill, but shrugged it off. “The price of your easement just doubled,” he said.
He was halfway back up the hill, when he heard his name shouted. Turning, he saw Troyer loping uphill toward him, his gut jiggling over his Speedo. He arrived winded and clutching a swatch of papers. Lincoln didn’t recognize them as pages from Teddy’s manuscript until the other man handed them over. “Roxy found these in the yard.”
Unless Lincoln was mistaken, they’d been crumpled up and tossed in the trash and, just now, retrieved and hastily smoothed out. “Thanks. Teddy will be pleased.”
“So … this whole easement thing? Does this mean we’re good? No more bad blood?”
Lincoln nodded. “That’s what it means.”
“All right, then,” he said, offering his hand. “Good deal.”
Lincoln swallowed hard and shook it.
Teddy
You’re sure Anita’s okay with this?” Teddy said.
It was late Tuesday morning and they were leaning against Lincoln’s rental car in the Oak Bluffs ferry terminal’s vehicle reservation line. The boat pulling into the slip was half empty, but it would be full going back, more people leaving the island this time of year than coming to it. Yesterday, Teddy had taken the same ferry on foot, retrieved his car from the Falmouth lot and brought it over to the island. Tomorrow he’d call the college and resign from his position there, letting people know that unless they could find a new editor-in-chief he’d be shutting down Seven Storey Books. Later in the week he’d have the English department send a work-study student over to his apartment to gather up whatever he’d need for the autumn—warmer clothes, work boots, his laptop—and ship it here to the island. The apartment itself he’d hold on to until the first of the year, just in case things didn’t work out on the Vineyard. And they might not. He knew that. In the aftermath of a spell, a manic stage often ensued, with bright possibilities everywhere that would fizzle out after a week or two. Something about this new plan felt right, though, and anyway it had been a long time since he’d been really excited about anything.
“Actually, Anita likes the idea a lot,” Lincoln assured him. The Mosers had been on the phone half a dozen times yesterday making a long list of things that needed doing in the Chilmark house before they listed it in the spring. Teddy thought he could handle most of it on his own. He couldn’t do electrical work, and a couple other tasks would likely require two people, but he’d be one of them, and if things went as he hoped he knew who the other would be. “You’ll be saving us money.”
Teddy supposed that might be true, but he also worried that his proposal had caught Lincoln off guard and he’d been unable to come up with a good-enough reason to say no to an old friend. On the other hand, he seemed genuinely of two minds about selling the place, so maybe putting off the decision until spring made sense for them, too. “Well,” Teddy said, “if you change your minds, just let me know, and I’ll clear out.”
“We won’t,” Lincoln assured him. “I just hope …” But then his voice trailed off.
“I know,” Teddy said. What probably worried Lincoln, who’d always been a thorough planner and averse to risk, was that Teddy was acting impulsively, committing to such an important life change without really having thought things through. “You hope I’m not setting myself up for a major disappointment.” He hoped the same thing himself. Exhausted as he’d been the night Mickey told his story, he was unable to fall asleep afterward, partly because his eye was pulsing to the beat of his breathing. When the sky finally started to lighten in the east, he’d dressed quietly and gone out into the kitchen to make himself a cup of Keurig coffee. He was doctoring it when Delia appeared in the doorway. She started to say something, but Teddy put an index finger to his lips and indicated the front room, where her father lay snoring on the sofa. When she joined him at the counter, Teddy handed her his coffee, made himself another and whispered, “Take a walk with me?”
She looked dubious but followed him out onto the deck and then down to the lawn below. When they were out of earshot, he extended his hand. “I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced. I’m Teddy.”
When she took it, he noticed her fingernails were chewed down to the quick. “I recognized you from your photo in the Minerva yearbook.”
Teddy was surprised Mickey still had one of those. Did he dig it out to show her, or had she found it herself in a closet or on some dusty bookshelf?
“Plus he talks about you and Lincoln all the time. I know the two of you a hell of a lot better than I know him, actually. Is it true all three of you were in love with my mother?”
“Yes, it is.”
“So what the fuck was she thinking when she chose him?”
Teddy couldn’t tell whether this was supposed to be a joke or a sincere if rudely put question. “Hey,” he said, “the other two scenarios don’t result in you.”
“Big loss for the world, right?”
“Lose the sarcasm, and I’d agree with you.”
“Nice of you to say, except you don’t know me.”
“I feel like I kind of do.”
“Feel however you like, dude, but trust me, you don’t.”
Teddy couldn’t help chuckling. “You sounded just like your mother right then.” They were quiet for a while until Teddy tried a different tack. “So your father doesn’t talk about himself that much?”
She made a yeah-right face. “He says that what I see is what I’m getting.”
“What would you like to know?”
She took a deep breath. “Why he’s like he is? What he was like when he was young? How he can be so laid-back most of the time, and then be, like, a total dick?”
So, he’d just started in. Told her about Mickey’s family in West Haven, Connecticut. How as a boy he’d been spoiled by his sisters and by the time he was sixteen was sneaking out to play in bars with older musicians. How his father always called Fender guitars Fensons. (This elicited a smile.) How Mickey’d stunned everyone by acing his SATs. How one day Michael Sr. and his crew had lunch at their local diner, and when it was time to go back to work, everybody but Mickey’s dad stood up, and he’d just sat there, his heart having quit on him. How the three of them had met at Jacy’s sorority, where they all slung hash, and how Mickey had opted to scrub pots in the kitchen. (“So that’s where Big Mick on Pots came from!”) How the three of them and her mother, who was engaged at the time, had returned to the Theta house late one night, and Jacy, after being called a slut by a sorority sister, had given all three of them big, wet kisses right in front of her. How another time, after one of their Friday afternoon keg parties, Mickey and some of the other hashers had gone over to the SAE house and her father, pissed off by the stone lions out front, had coldcocked the pledge who’d opened the door to welcome them to the party. (“Okay, that does sound like him.”) And, most important, how he and Lincoln and Mickey had all watched the first Vietnam draft lottery together in the sorority’s back room, when her father’s number had been nine out of three hundred and sixty-six, and how Jacy had been waiting for them out in the parking lot afterward and had cried when she heard. And finally how their motto had been All for One and One for All. By now, Delia had gone completely silent, and her eyes were liquid. It only took a moment, though, for her to return to what Teddy recognized as her default mode. “So basically what you’re saying is I’m an asshole for not appreciating what a great guy he is.”
“No, I’m saying that if he doesn’t open up to you, it’s because he’s his father’s son and guys like them just don’t. They com
e at everything on a slant, especially emotions. If he hasn’t told you he loves you, it doesn’t mean he doesn’t.”
“Yeah, but it also doesn’t mean he does.”
Again he noticed her mangled fingernails. “Okay if I ask you a personal question?”
“I guess.”
“What’s hardest for you right now?”
“You know I’m a junkie, right?”
“I know you have a problem with opioids.”
“Like I said, a junkie. He wants me to quit. I want to quit. But the thing is, there are just too many fucking hours in the day.”
“I understand that, actually.” She looked as if she might want to ask what he meant, but decided not to.
“Also, no matter what anybody tells you, junkies are junkies because drugs turn bad times into good times, and who the fuck doesn’t want to have those? Anyhow, I think he’s going to give up on me soon, and then it won’t matter.”
Teddy snorted at this. “If you think he’s ever going to give up on you, then you really don’t know him.”
“I guess we’ll see.”
Her tone of voice was infuriating, but instead of letting on that she was pissing him off, Teddy said, “So, tell me what you’re good at.”
“I’m good at something?”
“You’re a fine singer.”
“I’m an okay singer.”
“Is that what you’d like to do for the rest of your life?”
She shrugged. “Why do you ask?”
“Just wondering if you might not be selling yourself short. A lot of people do.”
“Kinda feels like we might be talking about you now.”
Ah, he thought. Mickey was right. She was smart.
“Okay,” she said, “so what’re you good at?”
He thought about it. “I guess I’d have to say repairing what’s broken.”
“Like what?”
“Lots of stuff. As a kid I fixed things at home. Toasters. Radios. Whatever went on the fritz.”
“That must’ve pleased your parents.”
“Not really. They were high-school English teachers. They looked down at people who knew practical things.”
“What do you fix now?”
“Other people’s books.”
“Why don’t you write one of your own if you’re so good at it?”
“See? You’ve gone right to the heart of the matter. My favorite teacher in college advised me not to write a book until it was impossible not to. I appear to have taken his advice.”
At this she offered a sly smile. “I wouldn’t wait much longer. You don’t look so hot.”
“That’s true, but I don’t always look as bad as I do right now.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“I don’t suppose you know how to swing a hammer?”
She looked at him as if he’d said something in Swahili. “Like, at a nail?”
“Yes, exactly like that.”
“Not really.”
“Would you like to learn?”
“Not really.” But he could tell she was intrigued. “Why?”
“I was just thinking about what you said earlier. All those hours you have trouble filling. I read somewhere that physical labor is a good distraction for a troubled mind.”
“This would be a paying gig?”
“Absolutely.”
“Oh, I get it. You think if I’m here, away from my regular dealers, I won’t be able to score?”
“No.” Though, yes, that thought had crossed his mind.
“Because I could score on this island in about two seconds flat.”
“You’ll be too busy.”
“Also, just so you know? If we work together, you’re more likely to end up a junkie than I am to get straight.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
“Also, I’m not something you can repair, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Which of course he had been. “I suppose you’re right. Still, all those empty hours, and I’ve got a ton more stories.”
“You’re actually serious?”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s fucking crazy, is why not.”
“You don’t have to say anything now. Just think about it. I’ll give you my cell number and you can call me later if you’re interested.” But he knew he was going to find out right then. If she was interested, she’d give him her number; if not, she’d say she could get his from her father.
She took out her phone. “Go.”
She was a two-thumbed, smart-phone typist, a trick Teddy had yet to master.
Then, “I might as well give you mine.” Reciting her number, she paused on the last digit. “You’re not going to turn out to be some pervert, are you?” He must’ve blanched at this, because she made another face and said, again in her mother’s voice, “I’m fucking kidding, Teddy. Jesus Christ.”
“Oh,” he said. “Gotcha.”
“Did he tell you about his heart murmur?”
“Your father? No.”
“Then neither did I.”
“ABOUT MICKEY’S STORY?” Lincoln said. Vehicles and foot passengers were still streaming off the ferry. “How much of it do you think is true?”
“Every word,” Teddy told him. “He was pretty clear about being all done lying.”
“Oh, I don’t think he was lying,” Lincoln said. “I’m just trying to understand. I mean, think about it. Jacy’s mother did everything she could to keep Andy’s existence a secret from her, and look at how that worked out. Why would Jacy turn around and do the same thing by putting her own daughter up for adoption and keeping her a secret from Mickey?”
“Maybe for some of the same reasons her mother did?” Teddy ventured, even though the same question had bedeviled him. “To keep her safe? To give her the best chance at a good life? She had to figure that she herself probably wasn’t going to be around to watch her daughter grow up. The alternative to adoption would be entrusting her infant daughter to a father who would probably continue being a hand-to-mouth musician playing in crummy bars like Rockers because that was the only life he knew or wanted.”
“You don’t think Mickey would’ve risen to the occasion if he knew he had a kid?”
“Actually, I do,” Teddy said. “I’m not saying she did the right thing, or was even thinking clearly. But she wasn’t just sick, she was desperate. She probably thought she was witnessing not just her own decline but Mickey’s as well. He told us himself that he was a complete mess.”
Lincoln didn’t dispute any of this, but he didn’t look convinced.
“Also,” Teddy said, “it might be argued that doing to your children what was done to you is the oldest story in the world.”
“Oh, I understand it in the abstract,” Lincoln conceded. “But the Jacy we knew wasn’t cruel. I’ve tried to, but I just can’t quite hear her ever telling Mickey that she wished she’d let him go to Vietnam.”
“Maybe what made it conceivable was knowing she’d prevented any such thing,” Teddy offered, straining to provide the kind of explanation that a man like Lincoln, who was uncomfortable with mystery, might find satisfying. He came from a family where questions had clear, obvious answers, delivered with breathtaking confidence. At Minerva, he’d felt cheated when Tom Ford declined to provide a clear-cut answer to the Civil War question they’d spent all semester debating. Even now, at sixty-six, he sought transparency in all things, even the human soul.
The last of the vehicles had rolled off the ferry now, and the drivers of those heading on board were starting their engines.
“Here’s something else that’s hard to imagine,” Lincoln said, climbing in behind the wheel and pulling the door shut behind him. “Us never meeting. Can you picture that?”
“No,” Teddy admitted. “Not really.”
“It is weird, though,” Lincoln said, turning the key in the ignition, “because what were the odds?”
Indeed. They all might’ve gone to different c
olleges and spent their lives in—how had Jacy’s mother put it?—“blissful ignorance” of one another’s existence.
“Kind of makes you wonder. If there was such a thing as do-overs, if we all had a bunch of chances at life, would they all be different?” When the car in front of him began inching forward, Lincoln put his in gear. “Or would they play out exactly the same?”
To Teddy’s way of thinking—and he’d thought about it a lot—this depended on which end of the telescope you were looking through. The older you got, the more likely you’d be looking at your life through the wrong end, because it stripped away life’s clutter, providing a sharper image, as well as the impression of inevitability. Character was destiny. Seen this way, every time Teddy went up for that fateful rebound, Nelson, being Nelson, would undercut him, and Teddy, ever Teddy, would hit the boards precisely how he had back then. Viewed from afar, even chance appeared to be an illusion. Mickey’s number in the draft lottery would always be 9, Teddy’s always 322. Why? Because … well, that’s just how the story went. Nor, as the ancient Greeks understood, was it possible to interrupt or meaningfully alter this chain of events once the story was underway. If Teddy had been the man Jacy thought he was when she tried to seduce him at Gay Head, not much would’ve changed, because she was already Jacy. The ataxia, part of her DNA from conception, would’ve found her even if she hadn’t been living a life of sex and drugs and rock and roll. Maybe this was the unstated purpose of education, to get young people to see the world through the tired eyes of age: disappointment and exhaustion and defeat masquerading as wisdom. That’s what it had felt like when Teddy picked up the Minerva alumni magazine and learned of Tom Ford’s death—like the fix was in, right from the start. Of course Tom would move to San Francisco when he retired, and there, free for the first time to be himself, would contract AIDS and die, Teddy feared, alone.
But this was the wrong end of the telescope. Okay, sure, maybe looking at things through the proper end also resulted in distortion by making distant things seem closer than they really were, but at least you were looking in the direction your life was heading. It wasn’t in fact possible to strip life of its clutter for the simple reason that life was clutter. If free will turned out to be an illusion, wasn’t it a necessary one, if life was to have any meaning at all? More to the point, what if it wasn’t? What if you were presented with meaningful choices, maybe even a few that were capable of altering your trajectory? Okay, say that sometimes it did feel like the fix was in, but what if that fix was only partial? What made the contest between fate and free will so lopsided was that human beings invariably mistook one for the other, hurling themselves furiously against that which is fixed and immutable while ignoring the very things over which they actually had some control. Forty-four years ago, on this very island, with mountains of evidence to the contrary staring them in the face, Teddy and his friends had all agreed that their chances were awfully good. Sure they were fools, by any objective measure, but hadn’t they also been courageous that night? What were people supposed to do when confronted with a world that couldn’t care less whether they lived or died? Cower? Genuflect? If there was a God, he had to be choking with laughter. Stack the deck against them, and instead of blaming him, these damned fools that he’d created, supposedly in his own image, would rather blame themselves.
Chances Are Page 31
