Viewmaster

by Ferdinand Stowell

The next morning I was piqued by an anthropological curiosity as to how my guests would mix at breakfast. Early 21st century God-born-again Southerner meets God-bore-dom Frenchies.

  “We went to ze Castro Theatre to see a film; they are showing films of Being Crowsby,” Bruno said.

  “Oh, really?” Maxine said. “I just love Bing Crosby. What did y’all see?”

  “High Society,” Sophie said. “Very amusant – amoozing – Grace Kelly, so beautiful, Frank Seenatra, Louis Armstrong.”

  “The music, so wonderful,” Martine added.

  “Oh, that’s a good one,” Maxine said and then she asked, “Any idea what’s playing today?”

  “Goingk My Way,” Hubert answered.

  “Oh, that’s a nice one, too, although why he had to be a Catholic all the time, I don’t understand.”

  “O, la-la,” Sophie began, “les gays et puis, maintenant – les Catholiques. Et qui encore – les Juifs?”

  “We are Catholiques,” Hubert said.

  “Well, I figured as much. Do you go to one of those beautiful cathedrals?”

  “Eh, buh, uh,” Hubert began uttering those strange non-words that the French use so liberally to communicate the true state of their souls.

  “We do’ant go to the cherch,” Bruno said.

  “Except for our marriage day,” Martine added.

  “I just don’t understand why French people don’t go to church. The Lord offers so many gifts and they’re all just waitin’ for ya for free at church – it’s like open bar at a tee-totaler’s convention; they need it so bad but won’t touch the stuff. Don’t any of you accept Jesus as your personal saviour?”

  “We had enough religion,” Sophie answered with a raised voice, “the Catholic church was a force oppressive in French history.”

  “Well, now, you seem angry at the Catholic church,” Maxine said with a worried look on her face. “I’m not angry at it; I just think it’s wrong-headed and it makes me sad how they distort the word of God.”

  “My wife eez full of fee-yer; fi-yer; fire,” Hubert said with a typical French mix of pride and resignation.

  “So, what about Mary?” Martine asked. “You don’t think she was divine?”

  “Mary was the vessel from which the Lord gave Jesus to the world. She was a mother who cried for her son, but she should not be worshipped. That’s where the – well, I mean no disrespect – where the Catholics get it all wrong.”

  At this point I asserted my authority, exercising my right to manipulate my guests in order to achieve that good cheer so conducive to large tips. I deftly took the negatives implied by the words “Catholic” and “wrong” and turned them into positives by associating them with European charm and cultural superiority.

  “Well,” I began, “the Catholics must have done something right because anybody who could make Nôtre Dame (I gave it an immaculate pronunciation), illuminated manuscripts and those exquisite monastic alcoholic spirits can’t be that bad. I mean, what if all we had were TV guides and the golden arches? That would be so wrong!”

  Everyone could agree on that and the rest of the breakfast passed without incident. I did notice that both Frenchmen were a bit transfixed by Maxine’s breasts. Her tits were more prominently displayed that morning in a low-cut jersey and they undulated as she demonstrated how the seals at Fisherman’s wharf had playfully teased the assembly of tourists.

  Martine and Sophie, with fine, less ample breasts of their own, clearly noticed too, as was evidenced by arch smiles, impatient frowns and a lot of poking and nudging of their husbands. They cut short Maxine the Performing Seal and left with their backpacks and husbands for the ferry to Sausalito; Maxine left shortly after with a friendly wave and one last shake of her boobs.

  It was an easy leap from Maxine’s mammary glands to Maria’s. I daydreamed about touching them, working her sensitive nipples until she…….

  There’s really no point in relating all that passed between Maria and me over those first few days of our acquaintance. It was the usual moony staring deep into each others’ eyes, the fondling of skin and hair, the first settling in of habits and routines that were still spontaneous. All this was of endless fascination to Maria and me but probably not to too many others. Of more interest to the broader public was our discovery of disturbing things about each other.

  I was back at Maria’s that evening with the dinner I had prepared earlier; it was heating up in the kitchen while I sat on the couch and she insisted on tidying up the place before we ate.

  Adam was fidgeting around and began driving a small truck up my leg. He was testing me, I knew, and I pretended not to notice him as I watched his mother. Before I knew what he was doing, he was driving figure eights and wheelies on my stomach. Then, stretching his body over me to continue driving his truck onto the couch he steadied himself by planting his hand in my crotch and left it there. I panicked.

  “Adam,” I said to the ceiling. “Maria,” I said, then louder, as though it were a question, I said again, “Maria?!”

  “What?”

  “Make him stop,” I pleaded, lip-synching while I pointed to Adam. I was sweating.

  “Come here sweetheart. Why don’t you go get your Big Earth-Mover video and watch it on the TV in my room.” Adam left the room to get his video. “What was that all about? You, like, panicked.”

  “He had his hand on my crotch.”

  “Excuse me!?”

  “Ok, I was going to talk to you about this at some point and I didn’t know how to bring it up. Look, I have this fear of intimacy with children.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m a single, middle-aged white male.”

  “Yeah?……And?…”

  “And I’m petrified that someone is going to think I’m a child-molester.”

  “Nobody’s going to think that. You aren’t are you?”

  “Oh, my God, see! Even you ask me that.”

  “Well, you brought it up!”

  “I brought it up because I’m part of the demographic! People suspect single, middle-aged white guys.”

  “You’re not middle-aged.”

  “I’ve already been through this with your father. He proved irrefutably that I am middle-aged. So let that rest.”

  “I don’t know what to say. It’s just a weird topic.”

  “I like you and I like Adam but I just have a hard time being affectionate with little kids. I thought you might understand – a little bit – but I guess not. Sorry I brought it up!”

  “I’m sorry, I mean it’s not like you’re a Catholic priest or anything. I do know what you mean and it’s ok. You’ll get more comfortable. Touching Adam is the great joy of my life. Kids need that and so do adults. I trust you; I wouldn’t have brought you into my life if I didn’t.”

  “Thanks, I know it’s weird, but I do worry about it.”

  “Well, stop worrying.”

  Most of you have probably heard of racial profiling, a practice whereby police, usually of the lightly-complexioned variety, treat every black man as a criminal until proven innocent. Although I’m not harassed regularly by law-enforcement, I am subject to the court of public opinion, which, in the right context, views my kind as a threat. If I happen to be walking past a grade school as it gets out, I get weird looks from the moms come to fetch their kids.

  If kids ask me questions at the store and I attempt to answer, they get jerked away by their mothers who seem not to care that they’ve nearly pulled their child’s arm out of its socket. God forbid there’s a lost child at the shopping mall; my first instinct is to comfort and help them find the parents; but these days – proceed at your own risk. Once I took a kid by the hand to bring her to the security guard a mere twenty feet away and suddenly dad swoops in, grabs the kid and gives me a look like I was Adolf Hitler and I owed him money.

  I’m a single, middle-aged white male – that much I have in common with serial killers, pedophiles and disgruntled
and armed former employees.

  When one of these deviants gets caught it’s almost always the case that they were avid church-goers or friendly and helpful to their neighbors. “He was such a nice man,” you always hear people say. or “He loved little kids and puppies.” Luckily I haven’t been that nice to my neighbors so I don’t think I would arouse any of those suspicions in my neighborhood, but elsewhere I’m fair game.

  My situation wasn’t helped by the fact that some of my friends had some pretty weird kids. Especially Molly and Ted. They named their first daughter Candy and it was all down hill from there.

  Candy, one girl’s story

  Her parents were becoming concerned at the direction her development was taking. She danced in short, sequined skirts with no top and no underwear. She’d become adept at lap dancing and indiscriminant as to whose lap she used. She would call out to strange men in public, ‘Friend.”

  I sat with Ted in the backyard of their house one day. We watched a top-less Candy as she grasped the pole of the clothes-line with her hands, one leg in the air, and slowly circled it.

  “I wish she’d stop doing that,” Ted said.

  “What – you mean that pole dancing thing?”

  “Yeah, she does it all the time. What if she grows up to be a stripper?”

  “I don’t think they like to be called strippers anymore. They’re exotic night club performers or, if you want to get academic, ecdysiasts.” He looked at me with consternation.

  “Whatsiasts?”

  “It’s from the Greek, ekdysis, to strip off.”

  “You’re not helping.”

  “Well, what were you and Molly thinking?” I asked. “I mean – Candy? – come on.”

  Molly and Ted kept having kids like there was a great shortage of babies and they were working overtime to fill all the orders. There were six kids in all and the behavior of the good kids cancelled out that of the bad kids: Teddie Jr. liked starting fires, and his older brother Paul liked putting them out. Sally liked torturing and killing insects; John Paul liked burying them and giving last rites. And Rachel was always telling Candy to put her clothes back on.

  Bridging the gap

  Maria had her own little melt-down later that same night. After we had finished dinner and Adam’s baby-sitter came over, I told Maria that I had a surprise for her. We got in my car and I started driving towards the freeway.

  “Where are you going?” Maria asked me in a concerned voice as I got on the freeway heading towards the Bay Bridge. Her eyes were wider than I’d ever seen them.

  “Well, I was going to leave it as a surprise, but I guess I can tell you; we’re going to see Citizen Kane at the Paramount Theatre. I remembered you saying you’d never seen it and really wanted to. I love that theatre, don’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s such a great place to see old movies. What have you seen there?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, I don’t remember.” Her voice got quieter, “well, actually I’ve never been.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. That’s one of the best things about San Francisco, even if it is in Oakland. I can’t believe you’ve never been there. How come?”

  “It’s not like there’s one big reason, you know, it’s just – Look, I’m afraid of bridges. Can you please pull off the road; we only have two more exits before the bridge.”

  “You’re afraid of bridges? Wait a minute – you mean like seismically? You’re afraid of one in an earthquake?” The familiar landmarks whizzed by in a blur as we sped down the freeway.

  “Well, yes, of course I’m afraid of being on a bridge during an earthquake, but I mean more than that. I mean all the time. Please exit now.”

  “Wait a minute – you grew up in the San Francisco Bay area; you can’t get from here to there without crossing a bridge, there are half a dozen major bridges. How could anybody who lives here be afraid of bridges? How do you function?”

  “I try to avoid going over bridges,” she said as she stared straight ahead, paralyzed by the impending catastrophe. Her eyes darted about. “I just try to stay out of their way. You’re going to miss the next exit if you don’t get into the right lane. Now.”

  “What about overpasses? Like on the freeway.”

  “I don’t really have a problem with them. I mean, not really. Please turn off the road.”

  “But they’re bridges!”

  “Calm down! “ she shouted, and then proceeded to hysterics. “You missed the exit, you missed the exit! Get into the right lane now! Cut over! This is the last exit!“ I lunged into the right lane, displacing and narrowly missing a car full of cardboard boxes and minutes later we were riding down the off-ramp. Maria was sweating and hyperventilating, her face she held in her hands. I pulled the car over once we hit the city streets and began rubbing her back and whispering ‘sssshhhh’ into her ear as though I were slowly deflating. She was softly crying into her hands as she said,

  “What, are you trying to shame me just because I’m afraid of bridges?”

  “I’m sorry, I mean, no, it’s just, it’s just – weird.”

  “Well, everybody has their weird side. This is mine.” She sat upright as I handed her a tissue. “The question is are you going to accept it or are you going to make me feel bad about it?” She turned to face me. “Think carefully before you speak because the future of our relationship will be hanging on your answer.”

  “I totally accept it. You accepted my fear of intimacy with children; I accept your fear of intimacy with bridges. I’m sorry if I made you feel bad. I should have pulled off the freeway right away; I just didn’t understand. Look, I’m the guy who invented irrational fear and that’s why I’d like to help you vanquish yours. You don’t want to pass that on to Adam.”

  “That’s sweet of you. I’ve tried therapy but bridges still creep me out. I think I’ll just live with it for now. And thanks for thinking of Adam.”

  “When was the last time you went to the East Bay?”

  “What year is it? I guess it’s been, let’s see, one, two, three, years.”

  “Ah-mazing.”

  “Weird, huh?”

  “Good weird. Good weird. Actually it makes me feel more comfortable around you. I was beginning to think you were one of those extremely competent and well-adjusted people one’s always reading about in the business sections of newspapers. You know, the kind that don’t have interior lives.” Maria gave me a crumpled little frown.

  “So, if you really had to go to the East Bay, how would you go?” I asked her.

  “Drive down the peninsula and cut over through San Jose. It takes a couple hours. I’ve done it before.”

  “Let’s skip the movie.”

  We returned to Maria’s house and discussed the problem of her father, his absence and betrayal. We formed a plan of action and the next morning I put it into play.

  B & Behave

  Maxine came down to breakfast around 7:30. She was stilled concerned about the Porky situation so I basically continued the conversation Maria and I had had about her father’s adultery and subsequent abdication. Maxine had continued praying for the family without much success. I told her I had decided to go look for Porky and bring him back home.

  “I’m not sure how to go about it. I can’t just leave the house, it’s my livelihood,” I said. “Tip can’t run the B&B because he’s too busy with his dog business and hotel bookings.”

  “Oh, Roy, honey, I can watch things for you while you’re gone. It’d be exciting!”

  “That’s sweet of you, but I can’t just hand over the business to you. You’ve never done this before.”

  “Oh, come on, how hard can it be? It’s not rocket science.”

  That was bitchy. I get that kind of attitude from people who have no idea of the vast reserves of patience and humility required to fulfill my vocation. They don’t understand that people want not only good service, but for
you to make the world whole for them. They have no idea how long it takes to convince some people that the instant gratification of their every whim isn’t good for their soul. Observers of my condition as hotelier are not aware how long it actually takes to sink in that it’s the people who tell you ‘Don’t bother,’ ‘Don’t make a fuss for us!’ or ‘We’re really casual.’ that end up causing the biggest headaches. That’s not something you can learn in a science lab at MIT.

  “Well, it can be a lot harder than you’d guess, but let me make a few calls.” Tip registered his alarm at Maxine’s proposal. I had to excuse myself from her and take the rest of the call in my apartment.

  “Look, it would only be for a day or two. My friend is really sick and I want to see him. Maxine can stay in her room and I’ll train her in the basics. I think it could work. The place is full. All she’d end up having to do is breakfast and cleanup. I mean at least until the French folks leave, but I should be back by then.”

  “You don’t even know this woman! What did I say about not becoming too involved with the guests?”

  “She offered and I think she could pull it off. She’s a born-again Christian, how much damage could she do?”

  “Hello, have you read the Bible lately? It’s full of disaster. You want to know what kind of people go to church? That crazed torturer/killer in the Mid-West? – Deacon of his church! That guy who gunned down his mother, wife and children? – Devout Christian!”

  “I still think this could work out,” I insisted. Suddenly Tip got all passive and meek.

  “Ok,” he said in a reedy little voice, “you show her how to put out breakfast in the morning and how to clean the rooms and bathrooms and do the laundry.” Then just as suddenly he barked, “But I don’t want her checking in any guests or collecting payment. I’ll come over and do that. Does she have a cell phone?”

  “I don’t know. She can use mine if not.”

  “How am I going to get in touch with you?”

  “I’ll only be gone two days, max.”

  “She needs to understand that she must remain in contact with me at all times day and night and that her loyalty to me supersedes that to any and all other entities, secular or divine.”

  So everything seemed fine until five minutes later Tip calls back.

  “I totally forgot, you can’t go now because I have three doggie appointments you said you would do for me this week.”

  “Oh, I forgot about that. Why did you need me to take them again?”

  “I’m having my polyps removed and I’m going to be out for two days.”

  “Well, I’m sorry Tip, you’re going to have to make other arrangements. My friend is really sick.”

  “With what?”

  “They don’t even know, that’s how bad it is.”

  “You promised me and you’re lying.”

  “I know I did, but things change. You have to go with the flow.”

  “You promised me!”

  “I need to take a leave of absence.”

  “A leave of your senses, more like.”

  “Well, too bad! I’m going,” I yelled.

  “That’s it, Roy! It’s over!”

  “Now look Tip…..”

  “No – don’t you look Tip me. We’re through. I’m finished with you. Find somebody else to put up with your bullshit.” I slammed the phone down and brought my anger a few notches below seething before going out to Maxine.

  I showed Maxine what she needed to know and could tell how excited she was to be running a B & B. She took notes while I showed her how to clean every aspect of the house. She immediately set about cleaning my house with a fervor I’m sure she never applied at home.

  I called Celestine’s number at about ten, after the phone rang five times I started thinking this was bad form – either you answer the phone after three rings or you program your calling system to pick up and take a message. I get annoyed at people who let their phone ring interminably, keeping me glued to false promise. Maybe that was excusable thirty years ago, in the world without cell phones and voice mail, but not today. I was reminded again of Celestine’s seniority.

  “Hello, I heard a voice say. She sounded different, more commanding.

  “Hi, Celestine?”

  “Yes”

  “Hi, it’s me Roy, Golden Rules Bed and Breakfast in San Francisco.”

  “Well….hello, Roy.” She sounded less sure all of a sudden. I wasn’t going to let the silence get awkward.

  “So, how’s your week been?” I asked, using one of the predetermined prompts I’d settled on to get her to talk about Porky.

  “Oh, just fine, nothing exciting.”

  “The usual routine, huh?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Listen, I found an earring and I wondered if it’s yours. Is it?”

  “I don’t see how it could be, I only had the one pair with me and they’re on me now. Did you find it in my room?”

  “Yeah, I did. Huh, must be somebody else’s. Oh, well. Listen, I’m going to be driving down your way and wondered if I could stop by to say hello, maybe take you out for a drink.”

  “I thought you didn’t drink?”

  “Oh, I drink, I just, um, prefer not to. You, know, alcohol.”

  “Well, I suppose so. When would you be coming by?”

  “Probably later this afternoon; I’m not sure of the time exactly.”

  “That’s fine, I should be home all day.”

  I readied myself for the long trip to Camarillo with a sandwich, some raw carrots and a muffin. At the last minute I threw in a couple oranges, which, in the not too distant citrus-rich past, would have been like bringing coals to Newcastle.

  Chapter XV: Travel Log