The English Major

by Jim Harrison

  We mostly talked about Viv and our destroyed marriage. Robert said that kids wanted their parents to stay together no matter what and though he was no longer a kid that didn’t matter. We stayed up fairly late for me, eleven o’clock, wrangling over the permutations of the marriage. He wanted me to say that I would take Viv back but I was unable to fully make that promise. How could I become a houseboy for a busy realtor when I didn’t have a farm? He put on Spanish music on the record player and there was a beautiful song called “Beige Dolorosa” which I instantly recognized should be my new name for a bird known to others as the Brown Thrasher. When I went to bed Robert said, “Dad, dad, dad, I’m SURE mother still loves you. She just has so many confusing issues.” On my bed table there were the power-of-attorney papers and a FedEx self-addressed envelope from Vivian. Stuck to the papers was a note from Robert saying, “Dad, don’t sign this.”

  I got up per usual at 5:30 a.m. which had become an issue in our marriage. Viv said my early waking hour disturbed her even though I slipped out of bed quietly and she never seemed to wake up. For the last years of our marriage I had been sleeping in a small spare room which allowed Lola to move out of the pump shed and join me with an air of victory. Viv didn’t want me in Robert’s old room which was more comfortable. He had been gone eighteen years but she kept the room just so for his yearly visits.

  It took a while but I finally figured out Robert’s hi-tech coffee maker and took a cup out on a spacious balcony to watch the sunrise. As the sky lightened it occurred to me the sun was rising to the east behind me. I saw it glinting on the Golden Gate Bridge. When you’re on the road it’s hard to keep your directions straight. Newspapers every year or so will run a story on how many people jump off the Golden Gate Bridge and I hoped that no one would try it at the moment. It occurred to me that the stone surface might be a little heavy for a balcony but when I got down on my knees and scratched the surface with my pen knife it turned out to be fake sandstone. You can’t be too careful. I didn’t quite realize I was singing which I always did on the tractor to pass the time and then I heard myself warbling a country ditty, “The beer that made Milwaukee famous made a big fool out of me.”

  “Dad, what the fuck are you singing at this hour?” Robert was behind me in an enormous fluffy robe.

  I apologized but he said he had to get up within a half hour anyway. He had told me the evening before that he had to make a quick trip to Santa Barbara on a producer’s private jet. A madcap period comedy was being made about three Republican wives in Reno waiting for their divorces. Two weeks in to the shooting the producer decided that he wanted to move the production to British Columbia because of the enormous tax break the Canadians offered. Robert was flying to Santa Barbara to convince the producer that you couldn’t “fake” Reno in British Columbia. Also, the director had threatened to quit.

  Robert made me my favorite breakfast of sausage, fried eggs and spuds while he ate a bran muffin and yogurt. Lola used to leave the room when Viv ate yogurt. Vivian would threaten Lola with a spoonful of yogurt and Lola would growl.

  On the way out after giving me various instructions on how to get back in the condo when I took a walk, and where the stuff was for the dinner I was to cook (my patented spaghetti and meatballs) Robert dropped the startling news that he would be picking Marybelle up at the airport on his way home in the late afternoon. At the door he handed me a letter Viv had written him to explain why she left me which was a virtual car bomb in my heart.

  CALIFORNIA IV

  Where are the pieces of my heart this morning? I sat on the balcony and read Vivian’s letter several times. I had Robert’s bird watching binoculars and between readings I watched the great surging of the outgoing tide under the bridge emptying part of the harbor and bay. I wanted to be one of those miniature men in children’s stories who could ride away on a bird’s back. Viv began with “Dearest Roberto” because when Robert was ten he decided he was an orphan from a noble Italian family and demanded to be called Roberto. Viv cooperated but I wouldn’t under the idea that it was already difficult to keep Robert in touch with reality. Once at dinner Robert asked, “Dad, what is this reality you keep talking about?” and I was at a loss for words. Here it is:

  Dearest Roberto,

  You know I’m a phone person and it’s real difficult to put my thoughts on paper as you asked. In a way my thoughts move too fast for paper. On the phone I gradually talk myself into what I mean. Just about everyone does this nowadays. I don’t know a farm woman who can afford a pot to piss in who doesn’t have a cell phone. Besides I was never good at writing. In college I would have flunked the freshman course Communication Skills without a lot of help from your dad. I always admired your dad’s word power but in recent years he mostly mumbles. Roberto, small things in a marriage add up. He talked about the weather day and night until I wanted to hit him with an iron skillet. What is the weather anyway? When we made our annual trip down to Bahle’s in Suttons Bay to buy some new duds he bought five copies of the same brown flannel shirt while I was down the street buying a cherry pie. Can you imagine this? He kept cooking me fattening meals though I begged him to stop though I admit part of the problem is Pepsi and powdered donuts. He thinks my real estate profession is what he calls a “boondoggle.” He used to take a shower everyday but in the past few years he would come in from the barn and say, “I didn’t sweat today.” He smelled to high heavens like the barn. For all I know he’s been messing with this tramp waitress Babe who works in the diner. He no longer likes to polka which used to mean a lot to our marriage. Several times I’ve caught him singing country songs to his mutt Lola who doesn’t like me. I found a French porno comic book in his pick-up given to him by his friend Ad. He’s been drinking a lot more than me. All of this is why I turned to Fred for love. To be frank, your dad bores the tits off me.

  Love, Mom.

  To say I was floored was a euphemism. I kept thinking of that last Ali-Floyd Patterson fight where Patterson was getting hit with over a hundred jabs a round. Was I really this much of a nerd or dweeb, both terms the young use to describe booger picking nitwits? I left the condo in a hurry, but pushed the wrong elevator button and got off in the basement by mistake which dislocated me and I began to sweat despite the coolness of the basement. It took forever for the elevator to return so that when I rushed out of the building I was gasping for fresh air.

  Well, I walked for three hours up hill and down which is easy because San Francisco is built on many hills. My hero Thoreau insisted that walking will get rid of what ails you mentally and this is true but only up to a point. I tried walking faster under the idea more is better but I felt Viv’s dagger in my side and slowed down. Chinatown was the best diversion because I’d never seen anything like it in my fairly long life. I was still wearing blinders like a draft horse but the sights and smells worked their way into my brain. I couldn’t help but buy a tea-smoked duck leg. The proprietor of the store was upset because I had tears in my eyes so I said that my mother had died and he was sympathetic and patted my shoulders. Of course I wasn’t lying that she had died but that was fifteen years ago. Chinatown made me think of what Robert said the night before to the effect that I should go to a foreign country where I couldn’t comprehend newspapers and television and everything would be new. I remonstrated by saying I couldn’t get on a plane but he said I could drive south to the Mexican border of California or Arizona and take a bus. Robert said I needed a new world to get rid of the old. I tried to say “I’m fine” but he dismissed me saying that I took off on my trip without my fishing equipment or bird books. I had simply “flown the coop” like a crazy old rooster. He tried to soothe my mind by saying that Viv had read too many Barbara Cartland novels and that is why she ran off with Fred whom she kept describing to Robert as “dashing,” a word not used up home.

  Well, I took a break in a pretty little park up on top of the hill. I sat on a bench and noted that I was surrounded by three fancy hotels and a grand Episcopalian
cathedral. The area was clean as a whistle and there were flower beds everywhere and in the middle of the park there was a fountain with playful sculptures that from a distance looked like they were molded on figures taken from children’s stories. I lit a cigarette and a passing lady looked at me as if I had a dog turd in my mouth. Viv kept racing through my mind as if she were wearing track shoes. It was plain from her letter that she loathed me though her objections to my character were surface complaints. That’s where most people seem to live, I thought. I was drawn to her at age nineteen because she was big, luscious, and ordinary. As people used to say, she was full of vim and vigor and offered a good balance to my melancholy and brooding that seemed to be passed on by my mother. I also fell in love with Viv out of reaction to a pratfall I had had with a girl named Aster during my freshman year. I was sure that Aster wasn’t her bonafide name when I had wandered into the art department building and met her when she was hanging one of her paintings that looked like a ball of spider webs. We stayed together pretty steady for a month but then she ditched me when she figured out that I didn’t have the wherewithal to take her off to New York City where she wished to live in a garret and have an artistic life. She insisted that Michigan State was chockfull of Philistines. In bed she was a wildcat and even made a lot of feline sounds because she said the cat was her guardian animal. She was tiny and lived in a tiny room where she cooked brown rice and vegetables on a hot plate. She said our relationship couldn’t continue if I ate hamburgers. By contrast when I started courting Viv she would eat two cheeseburgers, fries and a milkshake.

  Suddenly there on the bench I recalled a poem I had heard Garrison Keillor read on Writer’s Almanac on NPR when I had passed through Montana. A poet by the name of Blumenthal said, “I’m a scared and simple man.” Did that add up to what I was after reading Viv’s letter three times? If I am this solitary life within my skin why can’t I control the confusion of my thoughts? No one else can do it for me. This wasn’t an original question but then I’m apparently not an original man.

  I was about ready to head back to Robert’s condo to start my spaghetti and meatballs when the cell phone buzzed in my pocket. I squinted at the screen like everyone does but wasn’t up to answering. I waited a few minutes looking up at a beautiful cloud and then listened to Marybelle, “Cliff, I yearn for your company. I’m on the run at the Minneapolis Airport. You might buy a few clothes because you look like a hick farmer. See you at dinnertime. Profound kisses.” The idea that she yearned for me seemed a mixed blessing. I was aware that my best chinos which I was wearing were frayed at the cuff and that my scuffed shoes were a decade old so I window shopped on the way home. Dad always said to me, “Don’t mope” and I prayed to a god unknown while I bought shoes, two new shirts, a pair of black wool trousers, and a blue blazer, for the sum total of nine hundred dollars, about one percent of my net worth on this planet.

  Walking down Polk Street it occurred to me I had left both the key for Robert’s condo and the entrance combination code on a slip of paper on the kitchen counter. This was dollaring up as a mud bath day. I was diverted by how many young men on Polk Street seemed to be “light in the loafers” as they say back home but then I figured that like farmers they feel more comfortable socializing with each other. When I found out about Robert so many years ago and went to see Ad he said, “Everyone should be what they are.” Vivian surprised me by saying, “I was never interested in being a grandma. There are too many grandmas.” We talked a lot about this for weeks but then gave up. We even started joking a bit. I told Robert when he came home for Christmas that I’d rather he be gay than a Republican. He loved this.

  I stood there staring at Robert’s building wondering what to do and then I remembered I had Ed’s card and also a cell phone in my pocket. “What a bright boy am I,” I said aloud. He had the combination and key to help Robert with his luggage and sometimes to wake him up, or so he said.

  “You’re in luck. I’m, on the Embarcadero. Also Robert called to say he bought you a barely used Tahoe off a movie company that finished production and Madeleine Stowe was driving in this car. Isn’t that exciting? I’ll pick it up in Paso Robles tomorrow.”

  Another piece of luck is that Ed knew how to work the radar range to thaw out the hamburger for the meatballs. Things were turning up ever so slightly. Viv had insisted that I stop using anchovies in my meatballs because she had to meet the public in her job. “Just brush your teeth twice,” I had said. My dad loved garlic and anchovies and that’s one way I took after him. “Strong flavors for strong men,” Dad would say. Ed also pretended he admired my new clothes though it was easy to see that they weren’t of the high quality of what he wore as a chauffeur. He left after opening me a fine bottle of French wine. On the way out he did a little dance and sang, “I got a date with a daydream.”

  CALIFORNIA V

  With death we will become unknown to ourselves. Did I believe this thought? I couldn’t say as I finished the spaghetti sauce and the bottle of French wine at the very same time which didn’t quite restore my balance as it might have in the past. I studied the label of the bottle which read Domain Tempier Bandol and despite the wine being red it tasted as if sunlight had been captured in the bottle. I lit a cigarette. Viv had helped me quit for twenty-five years but now living longer did not seem such an admirable motive. On the far end of the kitchen counter on top of a stack of Robert’s mail there was an ad from a magazine called The Economist with this admonition, “Never lose your place in the world.” Wouldn’t it be nice to think so? It’s not something you do on purpose.

  I showered, shaved, put on my new clothes and went out on the balcony and sat with the binoculars. For a country person the idea of people living and working in tall layers can be startling. My friend Ad has a friend who lives on the ninetieth floor in Chicago. That’s really up there. The building actually sways a bit in strong winds off Lake Michigan. Ad told me this when we were driving back from Traverse City where we heard a speech by a prominent environmentalist who struck me as a nitwit. He rattled on in a rubbery voice about the methane gas emerging upwards from cattle feed lots and the challenge of turning a nation of three hundred million people into vegans. The show stopper was an old Ojibway shaman who gave the benediction. I had met this man when I went over to Grandpa’s with my dad way back in my teens. He was jolly but scary back then and when I questioned dad he said that this man was in close touch with all of the gods and spirits on earth who hide from us to survive. “We’re a nation of spirit killers,” dad said. Anyway, after the environmental speech this old shaman with an ugly, booming voice had a cormorant in each hand with severely twisted beaks from agricultural pesticide run off. He said that rivers and creeks were God’s vessel and veins and the water was his precious blood. Lakes were where his blood rested from the continuing act of creation. It was a while before anyone in the audience could say a thing and these folks are real talkers. On the way back home was when Ad spoke about people living in layers to save space. For a man of medical science Ad can be a little goofy. On Sundays he walks in concentric circles way out in the woods.

  I heard the door open and waited a minute before walking in from the balcony because I was glassing the big tidal thrust beneath the Golden Gate Bridge, not a good place for a rowboat. I was also thinking of the way Lola used to sit by the pond for hours waiting for me to throw a stick in the water so she could retrieve it. She couldn’t do it by herself. Life is like that. The question for me as a geezer was do I need someone else along on this merry voyage?

  When I walked into the living room their jaws actually dropped and I was startled but then I realized it was my new clothes.

  “Jesus, dad, you look like a golf pro,” Robert said as Ed poured him a martini. Marybelle began to laugh. She was not quite as bald as a hornet from shearing her hair in sympathy for her nutcase friend.

  “I wasn’t sure it was you.” She continued laughing.

  Ed was setting the table for dinner and it oc
curred to me that he might be Robert’s “significant other.” He told me that he was taking a bus to Pasos Robles early in the morning to pick up my car. I was reflecting on a possible need to flee as I heated up my meatballs and put noodles to boil. I allowed Robert a single premature meatball because he said, “I’m so hungry I could eat the ass out of a sow,” a family saying that had passed down from my dad. Marybelle and Robert had been wrangling about “the theatre,” more especially about Ionesco, Genet, and a contemporary named Wilson. This theatre wrangling was to continue through the evening until I was half-daft, all expressed in a kind of bitchy slang which I as a geezer couldn’t totally comprehend. At one point Marybelle took me down the hall in front of the photo of the black guy with the big wanger and said, “Our love is doomed.” I couldn’t help but wordlessly agree. We embraced and when I put a hand on her pert butt my insides buzzed like a hummingbird. I’m so biological, I thought.

  We ate dinner real fast and everyone became drowsy until Ed made a big pot of espresso and served peach ice cream. This brought Marybelle and Robert back to life in their theatre talk. The only part interesting to me was when Robert began talking about the social implications of the arts and entertainment. He said that his mother Vivian had watched a thousand trashy movies and read a thousand trashy novels and her mind had become irreparably damaged. This was close to home for me because despite Viv’s scathing letter about me I still felt poignant moments of loneliness for her.

  I got up from the table and wandered in the den to survey Robert’s library more closely. My new tentative plan on my road trip was to drive partial days, say get up at my usual 5:30 a.m., driving until early afternoon, take a motel nap, and then read books and work on my birds and states project. I liked the idea of tilling an untilled field. It seemed ironical that so many years ago I had lectured Robert on coming to terms with reality and now he was telling me that I had to “restructure” my own reality. This evening his own seemed questionable what with the movie project in shambles because the producer insisted that Reno could somehow be faked in British Columbia. It reminded me how I had lost my plum crop three years in a row to weather. We were too far north to raise plums. My motive was greed as plums were going for about fifty cents a pound.