“Right.”
“So what’s got you down?”
“What’s got you down, Martha? As far as I can see, you’ve got it made. You’re an artist, you’re independent, you are doing what you love. Also, you’re cute. Okay, I know you don’t make much money, I don’t want to sound like not being able to pay your bills is Little League, but you’ve gone through it for years and you’re well-adjusted about it, am I right?”
“Pete—!”
“What’s the matter, Martha, you can give it, but you can’t take it?”
“You can be a definite pain in the ass.”
“I thought I was your ideal teenage boy. You said that last week.”
“I never.”
“Your very words.”
“I take it all back.”
“You said you really adored me and that I was sweet.”
“I must have been stoned.”
“Excuses, excuses.” I walked into the dining room, pulling the long red phone cord after me.
“You know what I did today, Pete—Do you have homework to do? Am I keeping you from something?”
I thought of the letters and clippings all over my floor. “I’d rather talk to you.”
“Today a man with a face exactly like a white potato asked me to do his portrait. I hated doing it, Pete! It wasn’t even a warty, interesting potato face. It was just one of those blah faces. I know that’s unfair. It’s not his fault his face is totally without merit—but all I could think was, Damn! I’m never going to be any good as an artist. I’m going to spend the rest of my life in this crummy little corner painting potato faces, and I’ll never be Eakins or Sargent or Rosa Bonheur or anyone.”
“I guess not.”
“Thanks.”
“I was just agreeing with you, Martha.”
“Learn a little tact, sweetie! It’ll go a long way in your relations with women.”
“What relations?”
“Oooh, is that it? Well, look, Pete, it’s going to happen. I know you think I’m doing a number on you when I tell you these are your best years, but I’m not that insensitive. I know it can be hard sometimes in the teens, but I’m here to tell you it does not get easier as you get older. In some ways, yes, things are better, you get some stuff sorted out. But in other ways, look—avenues get closed off. I’m thirty and here I am—I don’t know if you can really understand what I’m saying. There’s such a huge difference in our ages. Fifteen years. That’s a whole lifetime.”
“Fourteen years. And I’m not that young. And you’re not that old.”
“Hey! You just learned tact. Also, you’ve just made my favorite teenage boy list again.”
Later, upstairs in my room, I got everything back into the manila envelope and put it under the mattress. Out of sight, out of mind. A fine old cliché that didn’t work. I pulled the envelope out again and shook out one of the letters from my mother.
Years ago when I received this letter, I had carried it around with me and read it over and over. I knew it nearly by heart. Now I read part of it, then I just didn’t want to go on with it. I put my head on the desk. Maybe I fell asleep … The house floated around me, cut off from the warm breathing world, a box in dark space and I, a frozen pebble, rattling at its center.
From the Manila Envelope
My dear, dear son,
I think about you constantly, with longing and joy. I dream about you often. Just last night I had a wonderful dream! You were small in it, maybe four or five years old, and standing on a hill waving to me. “Laura,” you called. “Laura, hurry up, I want chocolate-chip-cookies, a whole bag of them!” (Your favorite cookies!) And in the dream you laughed and reached out your hands to me with so much love that my heart seemed to melt. I ran toward you. Then I woke up, as happy as if we’d had a real visit!
How are you, how are you, how are you? I mean that in every sense of the word. I’m sure your health is good, you never were sick a day, but you haven’t forgotten (or let Uncle forget), have you, that you ought to have your teeth checked every six months? (Unfortunately, you got my teeth and not your father’s.) Are you helping with the housework? Are you reading anything interesting? Are you studying hard in school and doing good work? I say good, but I’m sure it’s excellent! If school is not enough of a challenge for you, make it a challenge. Don’t ever lean back, in school or anywhere else, with a “ho-hum,” attitude.
It’s now been almost two years that we’ve been separated. Sometimes I get so terribly sad thinking about all the days and weeks, all the months that I haven’t spent with you, all the special moments we’ve lost. I won’t lie to you, a great sadness lies on my heart and that is missing you. Every day I miss you, every day I think about you and wish I could see you even for five minutes.
It’s not yet meant to be, but soon, I hope, very soon. Until then, my dearest boy, I send you all the love in my heart.
Mom
Ten
Late Saturday afternoon, I put in a few hours in Gene’s office, cleaning and washing windows. It was raining when I left, and as I closed the door, a black car that had been parked across the street pulled away into traffic. There were two men in the car, both wearing fedoras. Fedoras? In Winston? I turned abruptly and walked the other way. Was it them? Had they found me? Had they been watching the office all day? Would they be waiting in front of the house for me?
The rain came down hard as bullets. People scurried for shelter, holding newspapers and pocketbooks over their heads. At the corner, near the bus stop, I saw Cary Longstreet. She was standing in a cluster of people sheltering under the plexiglass dome. Her arms were full of packages. I should have said something. Hello. Hi. Hey, there. She had smiled at me the last time I saw her. I should have spoken, but instead I wheeled around again and ran back to our house, all thoughts of the two sinister men in fedoras forgotten.
A marvelous, foolproof plan had sprung full-blown into my mind. Go home, get Gene’s umbrella, on the double back to the bus stop, slow down and walk casually by Cary. Then “see” her. Now talk. Oh, hi! What a coincidence. Aren’t you the girl from the Nut Shoppe? The bus hasn’t come yet? Let me walk you home under my umbrella. I’d lift the umbrella over her head. I’d offer to carry her packages. Once we were on our way, the sun would come out. We’d talk. She’d admit that she had hardly thought of anything but me the whole week.
Great plan. Minor flaw. No umbrella. In the house I rampaged through the closets and cupboards, flinging things out, before I remembered seeing the umbrella standing open to dry in a corner of Gene’s office.
I went out again. It was raining harder than ever. At the bus stop, there were four people huddled under the shelter—two little girls swinging ballet shoes and a couple, both in pea green sweat shirts, kissing.
I hung around for a while, I don’t know why, just on the off-chance that Cary Longstreet had remembered some last-minute shopping and would appear again. Finally, thoroughly wet, I went back home.
Gene had been in and out. There was a note on the bulletin board. “Gone to the theater for audition results. Keep fingers and toes crossed. Ravioli in the fridge. Heat bread, make salad.” I kicked off my sneakers and squished around the kitchen, heating up the ravioli and bread. I could call her. And say what? I’m the guy who came into the Nut Shoppe last week and wanted to get to know you. What if she had forgotten already that she’d smiled at me? What if she hung up on me? What if she yawned? What if she said, Which guy who wanted to know me? Last week there were six, the week before, ten.
I tortured myself for hours before I got up the nerve to dial her number. A woman answered on the first ring. “Yancey residence.”
“Hello?” I said.
“Yancey residence.”
“Sorry, I must have the wrong number.”
“Who do you want?”
“Cary? Cary Longstreet?”
“Who is this?”
“Uh—a friend—”
“Do you realize it’s nearly ten o’cloc
k at night? Don’t you think that’s a bit late to be calling Cary?”
“She’s there?” I said. “She lives there?”
“Are you calling for Cary?”
“Yes.”
“Well, she can’t come to the phone right now. We can’t have phone calls coming in this late. You call her tomorrow, but earlier.”
I hung up and stood there, looking at the phone. Yancey residence? Then I heard Gene in the front hall. “Pete?” He came in, smiling broadly. “You see before you, sir,” he said, his voice taking on an English accent, “Brassett!”
“Who?”
“Brassett, a college scout, otherwise known as a gentleman’s gentleman. Shall I take the tray away now, sir? … Certainly, sir, anything you say, sir.” He did a little heel-clicking number.
“You got the part you wanted.”
“I did indeed. I tried out for Brassett and I got it. And one other little plum—I’m the understudy for Lord Fancourt Babberley who, as you no doubt don’t know, plays the fake Charley’s aunt.”
“Oh.”
“‘Oh, that is fine news, Uncle Gene. Congratulations, Uncle Gene. I’m really glad you got the part in Charley’s Aunt that you wanted. And I think it’s wonderful news, too, that you’re understudying Lord Fancourt Babberley.’ ‘Well, thank you, Pete, I knew you’d be as enthusiastic as I am.’”
I looked at the phone again. “That’s great, Uncle G, that’s really great.”
Eleven
The letter from my parents came at last. Two letters, actually. They were there on the front hall floor in front of the mail slot when I came home from school. They arrived in a single plain white envelope. This time it had been mailed from Little Rock, Arkansas. They had undoubtedly written the letters somewhere else and passed them on to someone they trusted, to pass on to someone else, to pass on to still another someone to mail. Maybe the chain was five people long, maybe it was ten people long. None of them had to be members of Air, Water, Earth, just sympathetic supporters. None of them would live in Little Rock. None of them would know any more than the person behind and the person ahead in the chain.
I held the envelope up to the light. An ordinary envelope of the kind that came in a box of one hundred. I turned it over several times, studying my neatly typewritten name. And I imagined Hal, with his blazing grin, or Laura, red hair tucked into a kerchief, going into a typewriter store. Maybe she would be wearing a wig, the way she had that time, years ago, when that man who called himself Uncle Marti had taken me to see her for an afternoon.
In the typewriter store, Laura would check out various typewriters. She’d put the envelope into one of them and type my name and address. Then she’d shake her head regretfully. No, this typewriter was not exactly what she was looking for. And she’d stuff the envelope, as if without thought, into her pocket, and walk out.
I tore the envelope into bits, burned the pieces in the bathroom sink, and flushed away the ashes. For eight years, two or three times a year, I had done the same thing. Except the year I was twelve. That year, when I burned the envelopes, I also burned the letters, burned them unread. Didn’t they always say the same thing? “My dearest son … We miss you … Your job is to go to school, learn and grow … Someday you will understand … Someday you will fully realize why we … We love you, but …”
That year I hated everything, my uncle, school, most of all my parents. I drew up lists of accusations against them, starting with You left me, going on from there, but always coming back to You left me.
Why did you set that bomb? Didn’t you know what was going to happen? How could you be sure no one was in the lab? Why didn’t you think about that? You left me. You don’t love me. You love your stupid politics. You left me.
My voice was changing and so was I. I cut my heroes, Laura and Hal, down to size. They were dumb and stupid, they were selfish and crappy, and if they ever came back, they’d be sorry for the rest of their lives because I wouldn’t ever go to live with them again. I imagined the scene, I saw Laura crying and Hal pleading. Son, son, at least talk to us. But I wouldn’t say a word, I’d walk out on them and I wouldn’t come back until they were gone.
Every day I wore the baseball cap Drew had given me and every night I repeated, I’m Pete. I’m Pete. I’m Pete Greenwood. Pete Greenwood, school-skipper, baseball fan, a regular kid. Pete-not-Pax.
One warm spring evening I was out with Drew and some other boys. We passed our old elementary school and began throwing stones at the building. “Watch this one, you guys!” Direct hit. A spiderweb of cracks spread across a window. “Run!” someone yelled. “Come on, Pete, come on!”
They ran, but I walked. I strolled jauntily, as if nothing could ever bother me. In reality, I was in a state of shock, my heart shaking in my chest as I waited for the patrol car to pull up beside me and the police to spring out. You’re under arrest! Me first. Then my parents. The logic was inescapable. My arrest would lead directly to theirs. I saw them being led into court in manacles, I saw their sad, reproachful eyes and the judge leaning down. I sentence you both to life imprisonment …
When I got home I was in a sweat and couldn’t eat. I went out again. It was dusk, the stores were closing. I walked past the city parking lot, the bank, the newspaper building, walked as fast and purposefully as if I were looking for something. Yet I didn’t know what it was or where I was going until I found it.
Behind the post office, which bordered on the Interstate, I climbed over a railing and half-slid down a muddy bank into a patch of scrubby woods. As soon as I stepped in, I knew this was why I’d left the house—to find this wedge of trees, this place out of time. Faint paths crisscrossed it like pencil markings. Birds and squirrels racketed. I stood under an enormous beech tree on the roots that spread out like gray crippled fingers over the ground and looked up through the canopy into the sky. The Interstate laced over, above, and around the woods, the world woven over me, but unable to reach me. The hum of traffic filtered through the trees. I lay down on the ground, clutching at the beech roots, and cried and swore to Laura and Hal that I didn’t hate them, I didn’t, I didn’t.…
After that day I started reading their letters again, reading them and saving them, but it was never quite the same as it had been before. Because now, always, somewhere in the far, back reaches of my mind, the other thoughts, the questions and accusations, were always there, always waiting. I didn’t want them. I pushed them away, I resisted. Sometimes I was successful. Other times not. More and more I was unsuccessful—the questions came and I sensed something in me demanding that I face those questions, demanding that I answer them for myself. Why did you leave me? Why did you set that bomb? What made you turn from demonstrations to bombs? Didn’t you know what might happen? How could you be sure no one was in the lab? You thought about so much—why didn’t you think about that?
Now, after all the energy I’d put into being mad at my parents for not writing, I didn’t read their letters right away. I threw them into my desk drawer and went out, not going anywhere, just walking and trying not to think. A boy in a red-and-black checkered shirt, plugged into an enormous silver radio slung over his shoulder, boogied past me. Buses rumbled down the street and the smell of exhaust fumes linked with the smell of fried food. Downtown smells. I liked being downtown, moving through the crowds, nobody looking at me, nobody noticing me. A safe feeling. I walked for a long time, went past the Nut Shoppe, but kept going. Today wasn’t the day to go in there.
I didn’t read the letters when I got home either. Gene and I ate supper and he went out, and I went upstairs to do homework. In the middle of studying theorems, I slammed the book shut. I couldn’t concentrate and I wouldn’t be able to until I read my parents’ letters.
I read my father’s letter first.
Dear Pax,
Another year has passed. You’re sixteen now, nearly a man. I know custom says manhood doesn’t come until your twenty-first birthday, but in your case, I cannot believe this. You’ve bee
n through things that an ordinary boy hasn’t. I know it’s made a difference—matured you, made you wiser, grown you up faster. You have experienced, endured, survived—as have I. Life is a struggle, but we are armed for it. We are strong and become stronger while the forces opposing us must grow weaker with time because they are against the tide of history.
I haven’t been able to be an ordinary father to you, but I think of you and about you the way any father does. I want you to believe this. Life has separated us, but we are still father and son. These have not been easy years for any of us, but we will come out stronger for them. Of that I am convinced. Now, on your birthday, I raise a cup to you, my son. Salud!
All my love,
Hal
And beneath his signature, with a little flourish, the word Dad.
I read his letter several times. The house was quiet, the windows closed, outside sounds muffled. After a while, I unfolded my mother’s letter.
Dearest boy,
Happy birthday, dear one. This year I want to send you a poem that has often comforted me, in the hope that it will mean something very special to you, too. It is from the book The Prophet by the Syrian poet Kahlil Gibran.
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
Do you understand what I’m saying? I am now and always will be your mother and I love you as I love my life, but you are not mine, you do not belong to me, you are your own person. We are separated, it’s been many years, too many years, and yet this poem comforts me, tells me that although I haven’t been able to be an everyday mother to you, we will both come through these times, these trials, with our love and respect for each other intact. Happy birthday, my darling. I send you more love than you can imagine. May we be reunited soon.
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