“Oh God, I should have said something.”
“Why? Have you ever tried hitching from Bridgton to Pelham after sunset?”
“No. Not even before sunset.”
“So why are you apologizing? Mind if I come in?”
“Oh, sorry, sure.”
He lifted the backpack on the floor beside him, its camouflage cloth dappled with mud, while the rolled sleeping bag fastened to the top needed a good wash.
“Looks like you’ve been on the road for a while,” I said.
“Three straight days from Chicago—something I don’t recommend doing.”
“Didn’t you stop off anywhere to sleep?”
“No, but I did catch around six hours the night before last in the back of a truck that was hauling refrigerators from Pittsburgh to Albany.”
He dropped his backpack on the floor by the sofa and looked around.
“Cozy,” he said.
“You mean small.”
“Is this what they offer the doctor around here in the way of living quarters?”
“Not exactly,” I said, and explained about the flood at Chez Bland.
“Ah yes, the pitfalls of Do It Yourself . . . a largely middle-class obsession which allows the bourgeoisie to think they can do without skilled laborers from the proletariat classes.”
“I kind of thought of DIY as more of a weekend hobby, not to mention a way of saving money.”
“My point entirely: eliminate the proletariat by having their work seized by an educated elite who consider, say, rewiring a house to be a hobby that any college graduate can master. Didn’t you know that Marx had a whole chapter on Plumbing and the Redistribution of Wealth in Das Kapital?”
“You’re joking.”
He put on a Groucho Marx voice and flicked an imaginary cigar.
“Lady, if you believe that, you’ll believe anything.”
“Well, I didn’t believe it.”
“Just like your dad, who once told me that the key to being a proper historian is having a first-rate bullshit detector.”
“Didn’t my father borrow that line from Hemingway?”
“‘Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.’”
“T. S. Eliot?” I asked.
“I am impressed,” he said.
“Oh, reading is something I get to do a lot of around here. Why don’t you sit down, make yourself at home.”
“Thanks,” he said, plopping down on the floor.
“You can use the sofa, you know.”
“Yeah, but my jeans are so damn scuzzy after three days on the road that they might dirty up your furniture.”
“So you are a member of the bourgeoisie?” I said lightly.
“Touché. But, to be completely classist about it, I am a member of la grande bourgeoisie—Shaker Heights, Cleveland, division, where every Jewish-American girl is a princess.”
“And where every Jewish-American boy . . . ?”
“. . . is a tax-lawyer-in-waiting.”
“Where did you go wrong, then?”
“I got addicted to politics—and to disturbing the peace.”
“Feel like a beer?”
“That would be splendid.”
I went to the icebox, pulled out two cans, and handed him one.
“Schaefer,” he said, studying the label. “A good, honest American beer.”
“No, it’s not good—it’s just cheap.”
“I’m surprised a doctor and his wife have to do cheap.”
“Dan is still an intern and this is Nowhere, Maine—where the pay, even for a doctor, isn’t that great.”
“Well, as Uncle Joe Stalin used to say, a year in Siberia is good for the soul.”
“Stalin never said that.”
“You do have a first-rate bullshit detector.”
“Yeah, I know crap when I hear it.”
Jeffrey started to cry in the bedroom.
“Didn’t know you had a kid.”
“Well, now you do,” I said.
I went inside and picked him up out of his crib, kissing him on the head. Then I lifted him up and smelled his very dirty diaper. I brought him back into the living room.
“This is Jeffrey Buchan,” I said. “Say hello to Toby, Jeffrey.”
I lay Jeffrey down on the changing mat I kept near the television, unfastened the safety pins, and removed the dirty diaper. Toby glanced over in our direction.
“Better you than me,” he said.
“Hey, it’s just shit. And shit, as your Mr. Marx once put it, is the essence of life.”
“Marx never said that.”
“I know, but it still sounded good. And speaking of shitty smells, your three days on the road have left you a little ripe.”
“Sorry about that,” he said. “Any chance I could use your bath? I need a long soak.”
“Not only can you use the bath, I insist you use the bath. And while you’re at it, give me all your dirty clothes and I’ll throw them into the wash.”
“Hey, you don’t have to be my maid.”
“Yeah, but I have this thing about body odor. So the quicker you and your clothes are washed, the faster this apartment is going to smell better.”
As I finished changing Jeffrey, Toby started to open his backpack. I went into the bedroom, found a dirty pillowcase in our laundry basket, returned to the sitting room, and handed it to him.
“Here, put everything into that.”
He did as ordered, then went into the bathroom, closed the door, and half opened it a few moments later, his bare arm appearing with a handful of his clothes.
He closed the door again and I could hear the water running. I returned to Jeffrey who had amazingly drifted off back to sleep. I put him back in his crib, picked up the bag of clothes, and went downstairs to the laundry room behind the doctor’s office. After I loaded Toby’s smelly clothes into the machine, I stepped out into the street. A voice called behind me.
“Hey there, Mrs. Buchan.”
Damn.
“Hello, Billy. What has you out late?”
“Often take a walk around now. Everything working okay in the laundry room?”
I stiffened. “How did you know I was in the laundry room, Billy?”
“Why else would you been down here around eleven p.m.?”
Good point.
“See you’ve got a visitor,” he said.
“How did you see that, Billy?”
“Saw him walk into town earlier, and come to your door.”
“I thought you only went out for a walk a few minutes ago.”
He avoided my questioning gaze.
“Been out a lot tonight.”
Evidently. “He’s an old college friend of ours.”
“Ain’t any of my business, ma’am. Just making an observation, that’s all. Hope I didn’t trouble you or nothing.”
Well, frankly, Billy, you did. Because I’m wondering if—and why—you’re watching my front door all the time.
“Not to worry, Billy. Good night.”
“And a real good night to you, ma’am.”
As I went back upstairs I made a mental note to ask Estelle tomorrow if Billy ever had a history of stalking people . . . or if I was the first person to be honored with his excessive interest.
Once inside the apartment I checked on Jeffrey, who was still sleeping soundly. The bathroom door remained closed. A half hour went by, during which I continued trying to work my way through Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow and wondering was it me or Pynchon that was making it such hard going. Then I walked over to the bathroom door and tried to listen for sounds of life within. When none came, I knocked on the door. No response. I knocked again. Still no response. I called out Toby’s name—twice. Now I was nervous. One final loud knock on the door and I flung it open.
“Toby!”
He was lying naked in the bath, fast asleep, his head well above the top of the water. I glanced in his direction, then turned my eyes away and left the room shouting h
is name again. This time he came to, looking thoroughly disoriented, evidently wondering where the hell he was right now, and who was this woman trying to wake him up.
“Jesus fuck . . .” he said, squinting madly.
“And a very good morning to you.”
“It’s morning?”
“Hardly. But you have been asleep in there for over half an hour and I was worried you might have drowned.”
“Sorry, sorry . . .”
“Hey, just glad you’re still with us. Feel like eating now?”
“That would be great.”
“How does an omelet sound?”
“Very edible.”
He emerged around ten minutes later, clean-shaven, wearing a fresh T-shirt and a pair of jeans.
“Thanks for rescuing me from the watery depths,” he said. “It would have been a stupid way to go.”
“Well, six hours of sleep in three days is kind of a recipe for disaster.”
He sat down at the kitchen table. I offered him another beer and heated up the frying pan.
“Why are you hitchhiking?” I asked. “Wouldn’t it be easier to buy a Greyhound pass?”
“Sure. But the whole point is to have an On the Road experience. You know, coast to coast by thumb—and maybe get a couple of magazine articles or a book out of it.”
“And what made you decide to start in Maine?”
“The first truck that picked me up got me to Akron, Ohio. The second lift to Pittsburgh, then Albany, then Plattsburgh, where I spent half the night in a twenty-four-hour diner, then a retired Marine Corps captain got me as far as Manchester, New Hampshire—which might just be the most fascist town in America . . .”
“Did you tell the Marine Corps captain that?”
“Hell no. I didn’t discuss politics with him—I wanted to keep the lift. Anyway, after Manchester I hooked up with a trucker heading north to Bangor. He had some truck stop girl he was seeing in Lewiston, so he detoured off the highway and he dropped me in Bridgton because—”
“My dad told you, ‘If you ever need a bed for the night in Maine, call Hannah’?”
A shrug.
“He did mention you were up here when I told him I was hitting the road and gave me your number. I’ve phone numbers of friends and friends of friends around the States. Anyway, if you’re doing a trans-American hitchhike, Maine is a good geographic starting point. Top of the country and all that.”
“No doubt, your doctoral adviser isn’t exactly pleased that you’ve decided to vanish for a year.”
“So speaks a prof’s daughter. Nah, he was pretty cool about it—and he knows that if I get a book out of this trip, it will raise my profile quite a bit, which will help get me the right tenure-track job when the time comes, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah . . . and yeah, I have these hidden careerist facets to my character.”
“Or maybe not so hidden. What was the doctoral thesis on?”
“‘Do It Yourself Plumbing and Marxist Redistribution of Communal Wealth.’”
“Very funny.”
“It’s not far off. The real subject is the sort of DIY Marxism that Allende tried to practice in Chile.”
“You’ve spent time in Chile?”
“You mean, you never read my stunning collection of dispatches from Santiago in The Nation?”
“No, I only read Playboy,” I said, “for the interviews.”
He laughed. “I deserved that.”
“Yes, you did.”
He looked at me. “I really like your style.”
I fought back a small blush.
“So,” I said, “having failed to save America from Vietnam, and Chile from the CIA, you decided to run back into the protective arms of the Ivory Tower.”
“Man, you’re brutal—and right on the money.”
I served up the omelet, grabbed two more cans of beer from the icebox, and listened to Toby’s stories about his time in Chile and how he got a little too friendly with an older revolutionary named Lucia, who turned out to be working as a paid informant for “our spooks in Washington” and who was appointed to a big job in the Pinochet regime after the coup.
“Assistant undersecretary for Chilean-American affairs—of which she already had considerable experience, courtesy of yours truly.”
“You’re lucky she didn’t have you hanged, drawn, and quartered.”
“Ah, but as soon as Allende was ‘suicided,’ a sympathetic guy in our embassy got a message to me in Santiago that I had around twelve hours to get out of Dodge, as I was on a death squad list. So I took his advice, hightailed it to the airport, and just managed to talk my way onto the last flight of the night, which happened to be bound for Miami. Pinochet’s goons broke into my room around an hour after I was in the air.”
“Now I see why you wanted to do something nice and quiet afterward, like a PhD.”
“Yeah, you can’t stay on the barricades forever . . . though your dad might be the exception to that rule.”
Toby went into a glowing testimonial about my dad—how he had “the most acute historical mind” he had ever encountered; how he had a real interest in his comrades and never tried to “pull that Jimmy Stewart paternal shit” on anyone younger than him; and how, unlike so many people he’d met in the antiwar movement, he was less interested in his public image than he was in “sticking it to the man.”
“I don’t think my father minds the public attention.”
“Didn’t Lenin say that all revolutionary leaders need ego and the id?”
“Sounds more like Freud to me.”
“Probably is—since I just made it up. Good omelet, by the way.”
“Well, that’s what us housewives are good at—cooking and having babies.”
“I can’t imagine that you’re just a housewife.”
“No, I also work in the local library. And if you say, ‘That’s interesting,’ I won’t talk to you again.”
“That’s interesting.”
Long silence, during which he stared directly at me, challenging me to blink, laugh, whatever. After one very long minute, I cracked, giggling. He laughed too.
“You’re a piece of work, did you know that?” I asked.
“That’s what my father always told me: ‘Toby, vy you bein’ such a schmuck and tryin’ to be Emma Goldman? The FBI, they come to my door, they say: “Your son, he vants to tear up the Constitution of the United States and set up a Marxist state.” I tell ’em: “Nah, he just thinks the revolutionary stuff vill get him laid.”’”
“Does your father really talk like that?”
“Just about. He came over from Wrocław in 1930—just before it completely hit the fan there for Polish Jews.”
“And did he really say that to the feds?”
“So he told me.”
“And did you become the big revolutionary to get laid a lot?”
“Well, radical ideas are an aphrodisiac.”
“Who said that? Sonny Liston?”
He laughed, then asked, “Are you happy being a librarian?”
“No—I want to teach. But opportunities aren’t exactly thick on the ground in Pelham, and just having had the baby . . .”
“Excuses, excuses.”
I tensed and said nothing.
“Did I touch a sore spot?” he asked.
“Yes, you did.”
“I could say sorry, but I wouldn’t mean it.”
“Well, at least that’s honest.”
“Or as honest as I ever get.”
“Which is more honest, I suppose. Another beer?”
“Actually, what I’d like to do now, if you don’t mind, is crash.”
“Fine by me—it’s late. And I’m a working mom, so I’m up early. What are you planning to do tomorrow?”
“Well, I could hit the road if I’m in the way here.”
“You’re not in the way. And don’t you want to rest up for a couple of days after your marathon trip?”
“That would be cool.”
&nb
sp; “Dan won’t be back for at least three days—that is, unless his dad dies before then, in which case I’ll have to head off with Jeffrey to Glens Falls. But really, you’re welcome to stay for a couple more nights if you like.”
He reached over and touched my arm.
“Thank you,” he said.
I could feel my cheeks redden, and hoped they weren’t noticeable, and I wondered why the hell I had reacted that way to his touch.
I helped him arrange the cushions from the couch on the floor to create a makeshift bed. He rolled out his sleeping bag, which looked even dirtier when fully unfurled.
“Give that to me tomorrow and I’ll wash it for you,” I said.
“You really don’t have to wait on me like this.”
“I’m not waiting on you. I’m just offering to put your sleeping bag in a washing machine and turn it on . . . which isn’t exactly a big deal, now is it? But let me guess: you grew up in a house full of servants and you always feel a lingering class guilt about having help around the house.”
A pause as he continued making up his bed.
“We didn’t have servants,” he finally said. “Just a maid named Geneva—which sounds very Aunt Jemima, I know—but, hey, it was Shaker Heights . . .”
“And it certainly gave you something to rebel against.”
In the bedroom, Jeffrey started to stir—a tentative cry that I knew would build up into a massive yelp if I didn’t get to him in the next minute.
“I’d better go sort out Monsieur,” I said.
“This has been fun,” he said.
He looked at me with those bedroom eyes of his—and I found myself wanting to get into my own bedroom fast.
“Get some sleep,” I said.
I managed to settle Jeff down in a couple of minutes. Then I got undressed, slipped into bed, and tried to concentrate on my book. But I kept replaying our conversation in my mind, and found myself thinking: He got me to sound like Dorothy Parker, or some real New York smarty-pants. He made me feel smart. More than that, he took me seriously . . .
I turned off the light. I tried to sleep. I couldn’t. I kept replaying that moment when I found him asleep in the bath . . .
I turned the light back on. I read for two hours, forcing myself to navigate Pynchon’s vision of America the Deranged. Once or twice I heard Toby stir in the next room—and listened intently for signs that he might be up and about. But eventually such restive noises were superseded by the metronomic sound of him snoring. I cursed myself for acting like a love-struck teenager, turned off the light, and finally surrendered to sleep.
The Douglas Kennedy Collection #1 Page 125
