by Mona Simpson
“I saw this cartoon,” Mai linn said. “At school the professors have cartoons on their doors and you can’t believe some of the stuff they put up, but one was this couple in bed, and the guy looks up and says, ‘Wait! For a minute there I couldn’t think of who to think of.’ And I thought that was really funny but then I thought this guy, he’s a pianist, he has it up on his door, it was printed in some magazine, obviously other people thought it was funny too.”
“Do you think Klicka’s the reason you’re gay? Because that would be something maybe, that didn’t remind you of him.”
She looked at me a way. “That was what he did, most of the time.” She shook her head. “No.”
We stopped at the Alpine Hunter, a supper club that had all the midwestern signs of fancy, for a real meal before her plane. We sat at a square table with paper place mats over a maroon cloth. Our waitress was a large woman bundled into her uniform and apron. She delivered us thick-faceted glasses full of ice water. The ice was crushed and as you held the heavy glass, it tinkled.
I turned the place mat upside down and started scribbling. Mai linn had gone off to find a phone and check the flight schedule.
“What would you like, Dolly?” the waitress said and I told her I was waiting for my friend.
“Sure enough,” she said and swayed off. I liked to watch a woman gracefully manage a large pair of hips.
I drew buildings and a road with tumbleweed. Corners of a room with a fireplace. Mai linn slid back into her chair. “Eight o’clock,” she said.
The waitress returned, bending near. “So where are you kids going?”
“How do you know we’re going anywhere?” Mai linn said.
“Let’s say I have powers.” She smiled.
The restaurant was mostly empty, but a man a few tables away said, “Excuse me, miss, could we get some more sour cream?” and she reluctantly sashayed away, promising to return.
“Which means we don’t look like we live in Williston, North Dakota,” I said.
When she came back, we told her what we wanted. I wanted pork chops and Mai linn ordered a steak and mashed potatoes. For dessert we wanted two pieces of that white cake with yellow filling. I wanted vodka and Mai linn wanted gin.
“So you kids are on some kind of journey, I can tell, you’re not just vacation gals.”
“We’re going to find our fathers,” Mai linn said.
“You know, I can tell things about people,” she said, “I knew I saw a journey around you two, I could see the color.”
“So read our futures,” I said. “Tell us what happens.”
She shook her head, as if I’d laughed in church. “It’s not so easy. I’ll try later.” She looked over her shoulder at the metal counter where two of her plates waited, steaming. She looked at us a moment putting one finger on each of her temples. Then she had to go and get her plates.
WE LOOKED AT EACH OTHER and laughed. We laughed with our mouths closed so it went deeper, shaking us inside. Everything now was a bonus and after. Mai linn pointed at the waitress’s legs. She was wearing maroon bobby socks. This was hilarious and every time I looked the socks made me shake more. Just on a whim, this was really unlike me, I loomed up and bent over and stuck my fingers under Mai linn’s arms and poked her ribs, and her mouth shot open and sound came out but it wasn’t laughter at first it was a bottled explosive hacking almost like a choke, but it went on even as people around us looked and she ended up laughing in that desperate temporary gulping way you do when you’re being tickled.
Our waitress delivered our meat. Double pats of butter were running generously over the top of the steak and each chop. I’d forgotten that they did that here. We hadn’t eaten like this for years but we knew the only thing good to eat here would be meat.
I drank three vodkas.
At the end of our meal, the waitress sat down with us, propped her face on her fist and looked hard into our eyes.
“I can’t really do this right when I’m working,” she said. “I’m just doing this here because my old man walked out on me and I’ve got three little girls at home. But let’s see you.” She turned to me. “You have a long way ahead of you. I see restlessness. I really do. Whatever it is you’re doing, you’re not finished yet.”
“Does she find her dad?” Mai linn said.
The waitress looked at me skeptically, as if she were appraising. “I don’t see a man anywhere in your aura. Unless he’s sort of way off to the left side.”
“And what about me?” Mai linn said. “Do you see pain?”
The waitress stood up then with the strangest expression. “Yes I do. I do see pain,” she said.
When we started laughing then, uncontrollably, another look came over her face. She thought we were laughing at her.
WHEN HER PLANE was in the air, I got back into the car and drove in my stockings until I was out of town. The sky rolled over my windshield, a light show of sunset, dense orange clouds, pink-bellied, higher purple wisps floating in a clear blue. When it seemed dark enough, I pulled over and changed into jeans. He was worse than I’d imagined, Kenneth Klicka. At first better—just smaller, no monster—but then worse, with no flicker of conscience, no curiosity or regret really, nothing at all.
I kept thinking of Emily. This week she was shopping for bridesmaids’shoes for Mai linn and me. The big dilemma was whether we should also be wearing hats. I hadn’t told Mai linn about the letter from Interlochen. I pictured the envelope fatted with light, time stalled in it, a miniature Hebron, the sun-rained sidewalks, the short bubbler in the school, the perfect-looking cakes with yellow filling between the layers that when you bit into them were sweet with poison chemicals.
I KEPT DRIVING, drunk and a little crazy as the roads climbed and winded but I thought it was better this way because I wanted to get to Montana tonight, no more delays, I wanted to wake up tomorrow morning in that mountain valley where I would go over every inch and touch every tree and walk the same ground my father had. I’d look into each person’s face with a question. And then I could go home and sleep. I yearned for my own bed, to start over again right.
My headlights fuzzed the dark and confused stars, making dense ghosts before me who then receded into the plain, insect-voiced bush of night. I rolled my window down and a sharp cold hooked in with the sounds. I counted the high small towns as I passed and the miles of highway between and sometimes I ran the middle of the road, crazy, swerving turns, almost missing, it seemed impossible I could drive so tired and dizzy but I did. The vodka lasted less like a drink than a drug and the night bent closer, the stars like mean stones, isolate, protecting their own beauty. I wanted to sleep but something in my heart kept racing, skidding back, and it was so desolate here I was afraid to just pull over to the side and lie down in the backseat. I was afraid of who would wake me and turn me over. The towns, when I passed them, stood dark and prim, miniature, the only other traffic an occasional truck rumbling by shaking the road so I clutched the steering wheel harder and tried not to change anything, to go straight until it was over, like a natural disaster. And then, finally, I saw signs and it was there, Ambrose, and I drove down into it, pieces of fog flying through the radiant mist of headlights, like freed veils loosened from a bound and beautiful face. Mountains loomed huge around the town, dark and hard. I passed a wood sign that said it, FIRTH ADAMS COLLEGE, so I backed up and drove through that gate and on a winding road that led past lawns and buildings. I kept driving slow, looking for any light. Names of my old loves came and numbered the dark buildings. Then I saw one bar of light. I drove to it, parked, necking over to scan the backseat, count, counting was hard, my vision doubled and blurred and I did it again, to check. Six. Six. Yes. I rolled up the window, got out, the cold wet air set my stomach to swirl and so it rose higher into my chest and I wavered, holding the car roof for settled balance. The stars above seemed to beat like something pulsing. Locking the car, I kept bending and trying, it was like fitting thread through a wavering needle, f
arsighted, and I tilted on the grass, still like driving the blind middle of the road, across and back the line, drunk and under the swelled night clouds and sharp stars and cliffs of the rocky great-shaped Northwest.
I pushed a huge wood door and behind a curtain, I saw angels, stuttering, sandaled, standing in light. They were men with men’s feet, lines of hair on arches like veins in a leaf. I’d not believed in angels but that was because I hadn’t understood that the feathered wings were floor-length. They hunched up from the shoulders, formed massive heavy plates and curved higher than the old men’s heads. They swept down on the floor about eight inches past their heels. It must have been like dragging around a weighted train.
A woman lay belly-down on a table, it looked like they were plucking wings from her back, from the plug where they all grew from. She wore a leotard, and then I saw a huge trapeze swinging from the ceiling.
“Ware you?” someone called. I just watched and liked the air, splitting with peals of light and jewel, I leaned back against the rough door and let that wood take my weight. I was acclimating slowly to the light. In front, others rushed around, angels and kids in black clothes. The noise kept coming from different places and then all of a sudden, something opened and I understood these were people shouting at me. My hands found each other and worked and I spoke.
“I’m lost. I’m looking for Firth Adams College.”
“Is Adams College. This is the Marsh Reed Theater but it’s closed tonight. Rehearsal.”
“Oh. A play?” No one answered me. “Do you know where I could find a hotel?”
“There’s a Holiday Inn out on Nine.”
“Where’s Nine? I’m sorry, I’m not from here.” One of the angels dragged up the stairs towards me, slowly, at each step pausing, his right hand on his right knee. I heard a thump and a whisper, the feathers sweeping the wood floor and his bare heels. “I’ll show you,” he said. Outside, he pointed a long arm. His sleeve filled with night wind.
I made it to the hotel, checked in, took the key, found its secret in the door and felt my heart hard like a desperate thing throwing itself against a wall on the cold, stiff sheets. Home, I kept saying, home. I thought of birds arrested in flight, small startled things and the strong mean impervious eagle and none could be both and none could be both.
IN THE MORNING, everything looked different. I moved in. I carried all six items from the car, hung up clothes, washed my hair. I set my brush on the ledge by the sink. I folded my underwear and bras in the little drawer, lining it first with a motel towel. Then I drove around the town. This was where my father had lived. It was a decent-sized mountain town. There was a movie theater, a newspaper office for the Brown Mountain Times, a flat six-store shopping mall. Like a small resort set in the mountains, but the landscape, the soaring rock, made even the downtown dwarf. I looked in the phone book twice, then three times for Atassi. Finally, at nine o’clock, I called the university and asked for Gregory Geesie. When they said he had retired, I panicked. What if he was dead?
I looked in the phone book and found him. I called, told him who I was and made an appointment to meet him at his house at two. He sounded willing but indifferent. If I’d said I wanted to come to do a survey on lawnmower owners, he would have complied in the same way.
I didn’t know quite what to do until then. There was almost too much to begin. So instead I walked the main street like any tourist. I sat and drank cappuccino at the hippie coffee shop and bought a piece of carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. I remembered how we used to think carrot cake was health food. I put my hands on the place mat on either side of my cake. I looked at each bite on the fork before I ate it. This seemed all in the world that was mine and I was going to enjoy it. I tried to feel a little bit on vacation.
I knew the routine at medical school so well, every small thing I was missing. The coffee break, my midafternoon conversation, the way I got my short study-group partner to rub my shoulders while I closed my eyes. The funny thing was, I’d been there but I hadn’t felt it enough. I only half heard and half believed, and I took even my back rubs with a shield on my skin. I’d not counted that for much because I always would have rather been away in the high altitude of my father. Well now I was and I felt kind of sick. I wasn’t all here either.
I still had hours. I slipped on the sunglasses Danny Felchner and I had taken from Boss’s. My hair looked thin. The sunglasses turned the town slightly blue. I felt like a sick person in glasses, not a glamorous one. Then I drove to the college and walked around. I found the administration building, a great Greek thing with columns and bas-reliefs, all vaguely blue. I followed signs to the Personnel Department door, lettering etched in gold on ribbed glass. It was only ten o’clock.
I canvassed the library, passing over young bent heads. Short new hairs wisped up in soft halos the way hair does when it’s washed every day. When we were children in Wisconsin, hair was shampooed once a week. I felt like touching these heads with my palm and saying, rise now and go out and play. This toil won’t matter so much later. Your A’s will be only letters on paper. The intent scribbling all around me was steady, like faint music. It was one still vast room with an angle of light from high windows and old wooden tables. They were so young. I felt like the skull in a painting of lush fruit.
I missed home, but that wasn’t anywhere. I needed regularity, the exile’s substitute. It was Wednesday morning in the hospital and at medical school. People were working, holding wrists, counting blood beats. Classes had started. I almost wanted to go back, father or not. But I knew if I did this would rise up again and again.
The air glittered brightly and the mountains were white-hatted and forbidding. You could have had a life here. It was beautiful and all. But it wasn’t my life. I was watching the library clock, indoors, when, at the age I was now, my parents themselves had moved out into the air brightly, gaily dressed, not a strand of guilt in their minds for their own parents or their child. They had danced. I could see my mother against this snow and sun in a calico swirl skirt and clackety heels.
I wanted clothes—dresses. All of a sudden I wanted pearls. I wanted to tip precariously over curbs on high heels with men on dates.
These seemed Halloween, raucous things.
I STOOD ON Gregory Geesie’s porch at two o’clock like I was supposed to. I touched each of my earrings, the scarf. It was beginning to rain. I knocked on a rasping screen door, scrolled in fancy tin letters with the initials G.G.G. I wondered what his middle name was. Then I pushed the bell and set off three tripping bars of melody. I heard the shuffle of slippers.
“Who’s there now?”
“Is Mr. Geesie in, please?”
“This is Dr. Geesie. Are you the one that called?’ ”
I said that I was and he opened the screen door a little the way you would to let in a dog. There was a tiny hall with one closet but I had no coat. Then, we were in a room full of foot rests, doilied tables, and cut-glass bowls. The nap of the rug was newly ruffed with a vacuum cleaner, all in one direction. Every cover seemed to be covered with something else. The carpet had area rugs over it, the sofa a throw, and the footstools were laid with crocheted lace. G.G. Geesie settled into a banked rocker, observing me. He was an old man, pale-skinned, in an old man’s clothes. Another old man, this one much taller, stood eating raisins out of one hand. Three identically framed fuzzy pictures of the tropics hung over the couch.
“As I said on the phone, I’m actually John Atassi’s daughter. And I haven’t seen him, my family hasn’t seen him for years.”
“Well, I sure don’t know where he is,” Dr. Geesie said, rocking. “But this is Dr. Kemp. I asked him over because he knew your dad better than I ever did.”
Dr. Kemp was tall, with a ponytail of very dull silver hair. He wore black jeans and cowboy boots and made a slight bow in my direction. “But now I don’t know where you could find him either,” Dr. Kemp drawled.
I settled into one end of the couch as Dr. Geesie rocked. D
r. Kemp paced in long strides back and forth over the small carpet. His head was level with a chandelier. He kept eating raisins from his hand. I heard the sound of a loud cuckoo clock. Dr. Kemp refilled his raisins from a cut-glass bowl on a doily. I counted the decanters of candy in this room—there were nine. I turned to Dr. Geesie and said I’d heard about him from Mr. Nash in Wisconsin.
“Mr. Who?” he said. His skin, particularly at the neck part that showed through his open collar, gathered in folds, the hair follicles raised like a plucked chicken.
“Mr. Nash?” Maybe I should have said Dr. Nash. “He talked to you a number of years ago, I think. He told me that you had known my father.”
“Well, that’s correct. But I don’t remember any Nash. That very well could be though. Your dad and I were both in the Social Science Department. But I’m no longer at the university. Dr. Kemp either.”
“I haven’t seen my father for a long time. I’m basically trying to look for him just as a sort of family thing.” I didn’t want them to think I wanted money or anything.
“I have never heard a word,” Dr. Geesie said. “I taught there several years after he left and so far as I know, nobody ever heard a word from him.”
“Disappeared,” Dr. Kemp said.
“Yeah, that was our experience of him too.”
Dr. Kemp cleared his throat. “He stopped talking to everybody tied up in the university.”
Dr. Geesie had a way of moving his tongue so a small click emerged, a sound on an insect register. “He never came back to his office! He left everything on his desk and just vanished.”
So my father’s office: it existed, like a preserved shack full of some stranger’s daily things I always hoped to find every time I entered a woods and never did.
“Nobody ever saw him again.”
“God, that’s so strange,” I said.
