I'll Get There. It Better Be Worth the Trip.

by John Donovan

  “What did you think?”

  “First, I have to tell you I didn’t make out with Enid Gerber last summer. We talked about it, but we were afraid to. I lied to her too. I told her I make out with girls in New York.”

  “Do you?”

  “No. The worst part is I wouldn’t know what to do. You understand?”

  I tell him I do. I also tell him that Enid Gerber probably would have helped him. He knows that, he says, but since he told her about all the girls he made out with in New York, she would have thought he knew what to do.

  I tell Altschuler I didn’t make out with Mary Lou Gerrity either, so we both have a big laugh over what big bull artists we are.

  “How’s Fred?” Altschuler asks.

  “Come to see him.”

  “OK,” he says. And he does, and Fred jumps all over him as though he is a king. Fred jumps on me too, but not so enthusiastically as on Altschuler. We take Fred for a walk. Altschuler knows a back way into the small park in the seminary across the street from my house, so we sneak into the park and let Fred run around free—off his leash—for ten minutes, until a guard comes by and gives us hell. Fred runs up to the guard to give him a big kiss, but the guard isn’t impressed. I call to Fred and chase him, but he’s sure this is part of a game, and he runs up and down on the grass, ducking into bushes to hide when Altschuler and I close in on him. In another ten minutes the guard is yelling that he is going to get us arrested. By this time a few seminarians in flowing robes have joined in the chase after Fred, who is enjoying himself thoroughly. One of the seminarians finally catches Fred and brings him to me. His robe is covered with mud, and Fred is licking his face. Everyone but the guard thinks Fred is funny. Altschuler and I hurry out of the park, warned by the guard never to come back again.

  “You’re a real Christian,” I say to him, but only when I’m far enough away so I’m sure he can’t hear me. I’m a regular hero, you can see.

  Altschuler and I laugh a lot over Fred’s adventure. We go back to my mother’s apartment and repeat about ten times how the guard looked, what he said, and how dirty the seminarian got catching Fred. We laugh each time we recall a moment. To tell the truth, it’s probably the best laugh I’ve had since I got to New York. Fred finds us curious and looks from one to the other with surprised interest on his mug. I fall on the floor and give him a hug, which he likes so much that he goes into his purring-cat act. Altschuler bends to listen too, so, dopey me, I give Altschuler a dumb kiss. He looks surprised, and so do I, I guess. I get up right away.

  “Did you ever drink whiskey?” I ask.

  “I tasted it a few times. I didn’t like it.”

  “I don’t either,” I say. “My mother sure does.”

  We both speculate that it makes a mess of peoples’ lives but decide to have one swallow each from one of my mother’s bottles. We have a few swallows each. I get woozy. So does he. I don’t know how you could drink this stuff all the time, I say. Altschuler doesn’t know either. He says that it certainly makes you feel warm inside though, doesn’t it? I put some on my little finger to give to Fred. He licks it and sneezes. Altschuler and I decide to have a few more swallows and to drink water with it to see if it will taste better. It doesn’t. We start to giggle like little kids. So I guess it makes you feel good, all right. After the next swallows we have gone from woozy to silly to downright dizzy, so we decide not to have any more. We laugh again about the guard in the park. We sit down on the floor with Fred. The next thing, we are sound asleep.

  “My God,” my mother yells, “what’s going on?” Fred jumps up and down in front of her. She pushes him aside. Maybe it is twenty minutes since we went to sleep. Maybe more. It is dark outside. Probably more. Mother has come home from her office. Altschuler and I are spread out together on the floor of her living room. Fred has just hopped over to her from his perch, squeezed in between us, his nose stuck in our armpits because our arms have stretched across each other’s back.

  Mother’s shouts and Fred’s sudden jumping out of his position wake up Altschuler and me. Mother turns on a living-room light.

  “Davy …” she says. “Douglas … What on earth … ?” Altschuler and I get up.

  “I don’t understand, Davy,” Mother says.

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “What were you boys doing on the floor in the dark?”

  “Nothing. We fell asleep.”

  “Asleep? What the hell’s wrong with you, Davy? It’s not even six thirty, and you and Douglas are asleep on the floor in the dark!”

  “What do you mean wrong?” I ask.

  Mother sits down on the couch. She hasn’t taken off her coat or anything like that. She sits there with this puzzled look on her face. She starts talking to herself about what she should do now. Altschuler says that if it’s six thirty, he is late and has to leave right away. Mother looks at him blankly for a minute, then tells him that it is nice to see him. She smiles for a second and then asks him if he is all right.

  “Sure,” Altschuler says.

  “Give my best to your mother,” Mother says.

  Altschuler now has a turn to look strange, and he tells Mother that he will. He shrugs his shoulders, and at the same time we both notice the bottle we took the whiskey from. It is standing open on a table in front of the couch. Mother sees it too, gets right up, takes off her coat, and carries the bottle to the kitchen, where I can hear her making herself a drink.

  “I’ll see you,” Altschuler says.

  “OK,” I say.

  “You don’t think she thought anything wrong happened, do you?” Altschuler asks.

  “Nothing did.”

  “Except the whiskey.”

  “We drink that like orange juice around here.”

  After Altschuler is gone, I ask Mother what she wants for supper. I offer to make this tuna-fish casserole I learned how to make from The New York Times a couple of weeks ago. She likes me to make stuff like that.

  “Davy,” Mother says, “I have to ask you a question.”

  “Yes?”

  “What were you and Douglas up to on the floor when I came in?”

  “We were asleep. That’s all.”

  “Don’t lie to me.”

  “I’m not.”

  “It’s too improbable, sweetie. Boys don’t lie around asleep on the floor in the middle of the afternoon.”

  “We were.”

  Mother takes a big swallow of her drink. “I can’t stand being lied to!” She yells. “What were you doing on the floor?”

  “I told you.”

  “Like hell you did!”

  I go into my room when she yells again. She follows right along with me.

  “Why won’t you tell me what you were doing?” Mother demands.

  “I told you.”

  “I mean what you were really doing.”

  “We drank some of your whiskey and fell asleep.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “Because …”

  “Yes?”

  “We wanted to see what it tastes like. What’s such a big deal about that?”

  Mother has her glass in her hand. She holds it out to me. “Here,” she says, “have some.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “You liked it before.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Why did you drink it?”

  “For fun. To see what it tastes like.”

  “You know what it tastes like.”

  “Sure. But to see what kind of feeling you get from it.”

  “What happened?”

  “We fell asleep.”

  Mother finishes her drink and goes back to the kitchen to make herself anot
her. She doesn’t come back though, and she must have finished it right away because I can hear still another drink being prepared. I also hear this deep moan coming from the kitchen. I follow her.

  “Are you all right?” I ask.

  Mother is sitting at this high stool she has in the kitchen. I can tell that she is crying and having a great time feeling sorry about what life has brought her to think about for the weekend. She holds her arms out to me, and I go over to her. She presses her hands to my face.

  “Davy, Davy,” she says, “truth.”

  I nod.

  “Nothing … unnatural … happened this afternoon with you and Douglas, did it?”

  “No,” I say.

  “Or ever?”

  “What do you mean ‘unnatural’?”

  “I want the truth, Davy.”

  I back away from Mother. “What’s so important about the truth? Why is it so important to know every little thing that happens in my life?”

  Mother groans.

  “You never knew what I did from one month to the other when I was living with Grandmother. She was the only person who cared what happened to me. You didn’t. Father didn’t. What makes you think you should know everything I do now?” I know the things I am yelling at Mother aren’t what I would say to her if she hadn’t asked me about this afternoon. I can’t stop. “You never loved anyone in your whole life except yourself. You drink like you do because you can’t stand yourself. Neither can anyone else.”

  Mother gets off the stool she is sitting on. She brushes against her drink, and it falls to the floor. Fred jumps back, and I’m glad for him that the glass does not break.

  “You made a mess,” I say to Mother.

  She looks at me, her head shaking from side to side.

  “I’ll clean up your mess,” I say. I reach for some paper towels from a rack over the sink. Mother grabs them from my hand and throws them to the floor.

  “You … you …” she says as I bend down. She pulls me up.

  “Davy …” She lets go of me and moves out of the kitchen. “I can’t cope,” she says. “I can’t.”

  Mother must have told my father I was a lunatic when she called him on the telephone, because he is in the apartment in less than a half hour. I had gone to my room with Fred as soon as I had cleaned up Mother’s drink. When Father arrives, he gets the usual warm greeting from Fred, a morose one from me. Mother keeps saying over and over, “I can’t cope, I can’t cope.” Father looks around as though he were expecting the place to be damaged.

  “The way the boy talked to me, David, I can’t repeat it.”

  My father puts his arm around Mother. I just stand there.

  “I can’t cope.”

  “I’ll talk to Davy, Helen,” my father says.

  “You only have him a few hours during the week. You don’t know how he is.”

  I’m beginning to feel like a regular carbuncle. I was sorry I had said those things about Grandmother and all a half hour ago, but I’m not sorry now. Father doesn’t know how I am! What does she mean by that?

  “It’s not just Davy,” Mother continues. “The dog too. He’s all over everything. I don’t have a life of my own.”

  “Helen! Don’t talk that way. Not in front of Davy.”

  “Why not?” Mother says. “You should hear the way he talks to me. I can’t repeat the things he said.”

  Mother makes every move to encourage Father to ask her to repeat what I said, but he doesn’t fall for it.

  “Let Davy and me have a talk alone,” Father says.

  Mother looks around. “Alone? There’s no alone here any more. Yes,” she says, “you talk to him.” Mother says she’ll take Fred for a walk. I don’t like this especially, because Mother doesn’t walk Fred often, just when it’s impossible for me to do it. Besides, she has just finished saying what a drag Fred is, along with me of course.

  “Don’t take Fred,” I say.

  Mother looks at me, and I know I have said the wrong thing.

  “I mean,” I say, “I’ll take him out later.”

  “We’re going out so you can have a talk with your father,” Mother says. And that’s the end of that. Fred doesn’t care. He would go out eighty-two times a day if someone would take him. He runs through the door without even looking back at me.

  My father asks me what has happened between my mother and me, and I tell him a lot of stuff about how she drinks so much and tries to run my life and know everything I do and when I do it and all that stuff. Just like I told her before, except now I’m calm, and I describe life with Mother in a way my father seems to think is funny. He says he knows exactly what I mean and that he is sorry Mother is the way she is, but that’s the way she is, so what can we do about it? I say that I don’t know, but it’s pretty rough living with her. Father asks me if I would rather live with him and Stephanie. I hadn’t thought of that before, so the idea surprises me.

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  “You like Stephanie, don’t you?” he says.

  “Oh, sure,” I say. I realize that I like her a lot better than I like my father. He’s no prize, running out and leaving me with Mother. I don’t blame him though. I tell him I’m too young to make a lot of decisions about which parent I want to live with. Besides, neither is such a good catch, I say, after having had a great old girl like Grandmother to live with.

  “But your grandmother is dead,” Father reminds me.

  “Sure,” I say. “I know.”

  “About this other thing. Your mother was pretty upset on the telephone. She said something about what had been going on between you and a friend from school. What’s that all about?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Sure?”

  “I don’t know why she is so upset. We fell asleep on the floor this afternoon. Is that such a big deal?”

  “I think she meant something else.”

  “Oh,” I say.

  “Is he a special friend, Davy?”

  “Sure. Altschuler. I told you about him.”

  “I’m not prying, Davy,” my father says, “so don’t get mad. We don’t talk about personal things much, but sometimes it can’t be avoided. I guess you have a crush on your friend, is that it?”

  “A crush?” I ask. I get red in the face. “I don’t know.” I can’t think of another word. “I’m not queer or anything, if that’s what you think,” I say.

  Now my father gets red in the face. “I’m sure you’re not, Davy. I don’t want to make a big case out of this. Your mother does though. She’s an emotional person. She gets upset easily. She thinks you will end up … well, I don’t know what lengths her imagination will carry her to.” My father goes on to tell me that a lot of boys play around in a lot of ways when they are growing up, and I shouldn’t get involved in some special way of life which will close off other ways of life to me.

  “We only made out once,” I tell my father. He laughs. So do I. He’s OK sometimes, and he sure got the information out of me a lot less painfully than Mother could have.

  Then Father talks a lot about how hysterical people sometimes get when they discover that other people aren’t just what they are expected to be. He tells me there are Republicans who are always secretly disappointed when friends turn out to be Democrats, and Catholics who like their friends to be Catholic, and so forth. He says that such people are narrow-minded, he believes, and funny too, unless they become hysterical about getting everyone to be just alike. Then they are dangerous. They become religious bigots, super-patriots, super-antipatriotic, and do I understand? I tell him I think I do, but can’t people learn to understand other people? He thinks they can, but only if they want to.

  It has been a long talk, and I’m nervous about the time Mother and Fred have been gone. So I get up and go to the win
dow looking out over the street. I peer up and down the street, but there is no sign of them until I see something dart around the corner at the dark end of the street. At first I suppose it’s a cat because they run loose all the time, but I look again and see a woman, Mother, running, turning the corner too. The low dark thing is Fred. I can just make him out, working his way along the stone wall around the seminary. He passes under a street lamp, and I can see that he is dragging his metal leash with him. Mother is running after him, calling out, “Fred, Fred, here, Fred.” I guess Fred thinks it is a game. He darts farther away from Mother. I throw up the window and am leaning out. I turn back to my father, who comes to the window.

  “He’ll be all right,” Father says. “Your mother will catch him.”

  “What if she doesn’t?”

  “Sure she will.”

  “Fred is never off his leash on the street. He doesn’t know how to act off the leash here in New York. I’m going down!” I scramble to the door and run out into the hallway. I jump down the stairs two at a time, but since I’m not used to that I go slower than I would ordinarily. It takes me half a second to get back to going down stair by stair. I get to the bottom. No more than thirty seconds all told from the window to the bottom of the stairs. And then I hear it. A big thud. A terrible, unnatural yelping. I throw open the door as a car filled with people speeds down the street. I see Mother running toward a place just opposite the house. “Fred!” she yells.

  “Fred!” I yell. “Fred, Fred, Fred, Fred, Fred!” I keep repeating, “Fred, doggie, where are you?”

  “Fred,” Mother yells.

  I run across the street. I can’t see anything. My eyes are filled with tears. I bend down on the street. “Fred,” I call. “Fred, doggie, where are you?” I close my eyes tight. The tears run out of them. I see Fred. He is under the very car I have thrown myself down next to. He is moving. I think he is moving. It’s an unnatural, convulsive move. I’ve never seen him move like that before. I reach out to him. “Fred,” I say. “Doggie,” I say. “Are you all right?” I ask. I don’t know why I ask that. I touch him. I can hear my father’s voice behind me.

  “Don’t move him, Davy. He may have broken his leg. If you move him improperly that will make it worse.”