Other Men's Daughters

by Richard Stern

  “Not quite,” he said, kissing her to take away even this small sting. (She could not take much contradiction from him.) “You’re reacting to eighteen straight years of school. Adam didn’t assign names to the animals just for attendance records. Anyway, these geological names are wonderful.” He read out, “‘Vug, till, scree, kane, drumlin.’ I guess they’re Scandinavian or Celtic. They sound like primitive gods.”

  “More like Henry James characters to me.”

  Up on the mountain, fifteen hundred feet beyond the timberline, there is nothing but rock. It is a sight that has less of ease than most Merriwether’s seen. He counters his uneasiness by identifying what he sees, trying to discriminate between glacial and alluvial debris, checking on the stone shapes by comparing them with the squiggle drawings on the flyleaf. A mantle of unconsolidated gray stuff, the mountain on which he feels himself but another stone, looks miles across gray air at its brother lumps. “The newest part of the earth.”

  Walking up here is no joke. He has to stop every fifty or sixty yards for breath, though, aware of oxygen narcosis and sensitive to its giddiness, he tries not to gulp the air too greedily. Less is best. He pokes into the lunchbag: the Gorgonzola decomposes, and its fumes have contra-narcotic force. “Every nose its own eco-system.”

  The first hour’s walk was all color: meadows, black hawthorn with purple thorns, white aspen, chokecherry, tiny waterfalls, then a thinning in the grass, the bone-show of the rocks, the plates of snow. Beyond were the hundred shades of gray stone, split, sheared, cracked, broken, ground, dusted, the world’s trash coat, its vomited foundation.

  When the sun speared out of a gray diarrhea of cloud, it turned into script—a celestial Linear B. The light struck fluorite crystals sunk in the vugs. Quartz, amazonite, corundum, beryl. Merriwether himself is most of what’s colored up here: blue jeans, red LaCoste sportshirt with the green alligator, dirt-blotched white sneakers. Colorful, but not the official climber’s outfit.

  Now and then, booted climbers clumped past him in descent, some of them clearly annoyed at his fool’s guise. It is July, but it can squall and snow up here, it would be a lesson to this gold-and-silver-stubbled fellow to end up frozen on the rocks.

  Merriwether spotted a climber spiraling down, a girl, and up close, saw her great legs, bronze face. She is high-colored, buck-toothed, has the open face and squinting eyes of the mountaineer. “Hi,” she called.

  “How’s it going?”

  “I’m beat,” she said. “Thought I’d better turn around. My friend went on.”

  “Make it to the glacier?”

  “I saw it. You?”

  “Not yet. I’m debating now.”

  The girl leaned on a rock opposite Merriwether’s own ledge. She adapted J. P. Morgan’s answer to the man who asked if he should buy a yacht: “If you’re debating, better not.”

  “Is it that far?”

  She nodded to the peak. “When you get there, there’s a dip, you go down, then up, down and up again, and from there you see the lake and the glacier. It’ll take you at least an hour. It’s mosquitoey. But nice.”

  “How far is it?”

  “A mile, maybe more.”

  “A mile up here’s like ten below.”

  “You know it. Well, have a good climb, up or down.”

  “You too. Have a good day.”

  After he lost sight of the climber’s back, he felt for a coin to flip for his decision; he had none. He’ll find decision in the Gita. “And now, Krishna, I wish to learn about Prakriti and Brahman …” Nothing squeezable there. He tried again and found “Freedom from activity is never achieved by abstaining from activity.” “That’s the ticket.” He pushed himself up, hands pushing on his thighs; five easy, ten hard steps, a stop, two more, one more. His chest felt pummeled, his lungs raw. He made for a ledge, let his head fall on his chest, sank into himself. Whew. He has had it. He stripped sweat pips from the eye sockets, massaged his neck, rubbed his chest. Ok, he is almost ok. He leaned back on the ledge, took in the sun and slowly recovered. He ate the nectarine. Life. Fruit, Merriwether and the Gita against molecular junk. He read, “I am not bound by any sort of duty, but I go on working nevertheless. The ignorant work for the fruit of their action, the wise must work without desire.” Pure New England. No wonder Emerson and Thoreau loved it. From sense objects to senses, senses to mind, mind to intelligent will and that to Atman, “the Godhead in every being,” said the Glossary. Like the crystal in the vug, no, like life in the rocks, a grain in the grain of the universe. Easy to believe up here in this high, gray, messageless debris.

  Every morning, for a month, he has written on tropisms, instincts, taxes, stimuli, vacuum reactions. Just this morning, he wrote up the gonadal hormones which seasonal light released in swallows to drive them north. Neither duty nor desire. No choice.

  He, however, had a choice. He did not have to finish this climb.

  It is the coldest July day in Colorado history. By the time he and George drive up Boulder Canyon on the way back from Denver Airport, there is hail-ice on the windshield. Still, George is thrilled by the beauty of the mountains, the terrific cliffs—“They really are Rocky.”—the waterfalls. His little face glows rosily in the long frame of hair.

  Two hours before his plane arrived, Merriwether kissed Cynthia off at hers. She is visiting Weej in San Francisco. “It’ll do you good to be with people under ninety.” (Merriwether, though, has to ride herd on a run of uneasiness about what she might find there.) “You can sleep with anyone you like. Not more than twice with the same man.”

  “I don’t want to even look at anyone but you. But if you get horny …”

  “I’ll buy a copy of Playboy.”

  “You can sleep with a hippie. Just don’t infect me.”

  She’s in tears at the gate. “I don’t know if I can last three weeks away.” She takes off her flowered straw hat—her hair is balled into a nugget of gold cloud; how beautiful she is. They kiss while passengers break around them to go into the tunnel.

  That night, George sleeps in Cynthia’s bed. (It is years since Merriwether has slept so near his son.) He sleeps with his mouth open, makes sleep noises, sometimes talks—once he counts to sixteen—a Wainwright family habit. Can it be genetic, or is it anxiety? When George babbles something about fires, Merriwether reaches over to touch his hair, but George groans and turns away. He has a pre-adolescent sensitivity to being touched, perhaps deepened by some internal decision to stand on his own.

  The next day, when Bender calls for his mail, Merriwether asks him about fishing rods for George. Bender’s language is action. He goes up to the attic and comes down with a rod and rig. “You can get bait at Sargee’s.” (This is the general store.)

  “Thanks very much.”

  “He’s under fifteen, he doesn’t need a license,” says Bender and clumps off through the pines. He’d returned the shotgun. “Too many dumb kids around in the woods. Liable to kill one.”

  Merriwether goes with George to the stream behind the cabin; there’s no one in sight. George fishes just beyond a wooden dam which converts the drift of the glacial stream into a small torrent. Merriwether has never fished, but remembers his father’s instructions about casting. George is good at it. When Merriwether goes back to the cabin, he is whipping the line halfway across the stream.

  Merriwether puts on his working record—Chopin mazurkas and ballades—and does his morning chore (the behavioral input of the memory transplants done by the Planarian Research Group).

  Around noon he looks out the window to see George in his blue jacket and black cowboy hat—borrowed from a Bender shelf—walking down the rock path holding his rod and, wonder of wonders, a fish. His face shines with triumph.

  “You’re terrific. I don’t believe it.”

  “Just hooked it. Right above the dam. It wasn’t too hard. Maybe it didn’t want to live.”

  “Maybe, but it’s struggling now.” The fish was hopping around the hook, panting, gills
flapping. A rainbow trout, speckled black on the silvery flanks, banded with orange. “It looks like Aunt Emilia.”

  “It’s slippery. I can’t take it off.”

  Merriwether gets a paper towel, holds the fish and removes it from the little hook. The trout arches its head, wriggles around, gasps. Not pleasant.

  “Would you kill it, Dad?”

  “I’m not that kind of doctor, George. And it does look like Emilia. You’ll have to finish it off. Knock it against the sink. I’ll clean it.”

  George grabs the fish in the paper towel and clouts its head against the sink. That does it.

  Merriwether finds a carving knife and serving fork, lays the fish out and slits it open. It’s been quite a while since he’s slit so much flesh. There are the gonads, the heart, the spinal cord. He goes over it as well as he can for George, opens the head, points out interesting features, picks off the gills, describes the circulatory system.

  “Shouldn’t we eat it, Dad?”

  Merriwether fries it. There’s enough for four or five bites apiece. “More tender than Aunt Emilia would be.”

  “And not as salty.”

  George is almost visibly getting older. His face is thinning, and rich with expression. Priscilla tells him George and his friends look through sex manuals, have signs for fornicating (an index finger poked through a thumb-index circle). Merriwether didn’t know one end of a woman from another till he was a junior in high school. “How’d you like to live on what you catch or raise, George?”

  George says he wouldn’t mind if they had seeds for Mars Bars.

  It is a fine ten days for Merriwether. Now and then, he misses Cynthia, but he is busy and George is a good companion. They go into the mountains or down to Boulder. Every few days they ride the trails.

  “What’s for today, George?”

  “What do you want to do, Dad?”

  George senses his father’s new sensitivity to his wants. He knows it’s a mark of love, but it’s a bit much. To have constant choice is to be constantly obligated to enjoy what one’s chosen. Merriwether knows George feels this, yet he continues to offer blank checks. It is another form of his desire for ease. Even in the simplicity of this life—no dressing up, little or no shaving, no obligations, following little more than the earth’s schedule plus old habits of three meals a day and a certain amount of sleep—he’s burdened by the complexity of want. He will never be able to satisfy anyone, no one will ever satisfy him. Human flesh is born to itch. He and Cynthia will always disagree about pleasing each other, he and Sarah lasted as they did because of the very silence which eventually separated them. Maybe human beings who love each other should only present their best face to each other, saving their miseries for silence, dark and the pillow. Only masochists can tolerate lifetimes of complaint. Watching George read science fiction while rock music plays from Greeley or playing casino with him till they take their night walk to the stream and back is as close to human interdependence as he wants. (At least until he feels other needs.) In any case, George is permanent; he will always be his son as triangles will always have three angles. When it’s time to exchange George for Esmé at the Denver Airport, though he knows he will miss the boy terribly (and sees how George will miss him), he knows, and sees George knows as well, the deep sense of this permanent geometry.

  The ten minutes with Sarah is tensely civil. She cannot bring out a smile for him, can barely nod. She is tan, plump, her eyes are brilliant, but strained. She is completely natural kissing George, speaking with him and Esmé. Not with him. (What does he want?) She lets him carry her bag to the gate, but barely manages to hear his news about George, his questions about the others. He hands her the envelope with the month’s check and kisses George goodby. “Will you come to Duck Isle, Daddy?” (George hasn’t grasped the geographical limits of divorce.) Merriwether says if he can finish his book, perhaps he will, anyway he’ll see him soon in Cambridge and will speak to him on the phone before that. Esmé gives George a rare kiss of farewell, embraces Sarah, then takes his arm. “Goodby. Have a good time. See you soon.”

  Esmé sleeps upstairs. Merriwether has knocked out the sealed windows, put up screening, swept the place, pushed the books into a corner and made up the cot. “I thought you’d like a bit of privacy, darling. If it gets too hot or cold, come downstairs with me.”

  It works out well. Esmé is self-sufficient. She reads, writes five-page letters, plays Bender’s records, goes for walks, sketches. In the afternoon, they swim, ride, climb. Now and then, they go to movies in Boulder, they see The Marriage of Figaro in the Central City opera house. The final forgiveness scene—the abject Count, the benevolent Countess—makes them both uneasy, but otherwise it is a delight to be with each other.

  Esmé is lengthening, she has a sweet, loping awkwardness, is secretive, funny, oblique, sharp, self-contained. “Do you think it’s going all right?” he asks her one afternoon. They are sunning on adjacent towels after a frigid dip in Rainbow Pond. They are alone with dipping loons, sunning, shivering.

  “What, Daddy?”

  “This business with Mom and me. Are you used to it?”

  Esmé is lying on her belly, wrapped in a red beach towel. She arches her long head, hangs it. The hair is wet, a fair, jungly tangle. “I think so. I worry a little. Maybe about Mom more. She doesn’t have anyone.” Merriwether swallows. “And I think you have a girl.”

  “Yes,” he says. “I do have a fine friend. Whom you’ll meet, if you want to.”

  “We’ll see. I’m glad for you. I think it’s working out.”

  Merriwether towels himself dry. “You’re terrific. I’m a mighty lucky père.”

  That evening, Esmé hears a funny little noise near the garage shed in back of the house. She goes inside and finds a two- or three-day-old kitten sticking out of a Total box on top of the garbage can. She runs to Merriwether with the almost inert pile of fur in her not-large palm. “Can you save it, Daddy?” She’s close to tears.

  The kitten has a tiny, scrounged-up, monkey face. “They don’t usually make it if their mother doesn’t keep them for seven or eight weeks. We’ll try though. Can you get the medicine dropper from the bathroom?”

  They heat skimmed milk, mix it with water, then manage to drop a bit around the unwilling little mouth. “He hasn’t learned to suck anything, probably not even his mother.”

  “Who would have thrown him there?”

  “Someone who couldn’t kill it outright.”

  By afternoon, the kitten snuggled against Esmé’s shirted breast and accepted a few squirts of milk from the dropper. By evening, it managed to take feeble steps in front of the living room window. Its cry was like a pin drawn against glass. The next day it had a tiny little motor.

  “It’s learned to purr, Dad.”

  Esmé names it Figaro.

  “Is it a boy?”

  “I think so,” she said. “From the way it peed on me.”

  The kitten’s monkey head poked in Esmé’s shirt buttons. “It wants my breast.”

  But the kitten died. They went to see Cabaret in Boulder, and when they got back, the kitten was snuffling and threw up the milk Esmé gave it. Esmé’s face lengthened with misery; she held it close.

  “It probably has pneumonia, darling, I’m afraid it won’t make it. Keep it warm. Their temperature is higher than ours.”

  Esmé wrapped the kitten in her sweater and kept him on the floor beside her bed. In the morning, Merriwether woke to the sound of tears, went upstairs in his pajamas and found Esmé holding the four inert inches of dead kitten in her arms. “It died when I was asleep.”

  Merriwether spaded a foot of earth under a pine tree, Esmé lay the kitten in it, and they covered him with the earth, then a stone which they surrounded with pine cones and larkspur.

  The last thing Esmé said to him at the airport was, “If you remember to put flowers on Figaro’s grave every now and then, Dad, I’ll feel better for it.”

  He bequeathed this ch
ore to Cynthia whom he picked up an hour after he kissed Esmé goodby.

  The haphazard survivor. This was the anti-Darwinian notion which Professor Eigen repudiated in the great address of the Boulder Conference. Electrons got the jump on positrons, and this universe is made of matter, not anti-matter. So the linkage of nucleotides and protein cycles accelerated into the nucleic strand which survived the decomposition of other “information units.” A Paradise of Phage, but the very “mistakes” of the enzymes provided the new information which led from steady-state—and inevitable decomposition—to new information; to evolution.

  Slim, beautifully articulate in English, moving rapidly from blackboard to podium, gesturing, pointing, smoothing his silver hair, Eigen’s modest but accelerating power, like his own triumphant life chain, elevated the conference from a kind of factual soup to that vividness of being which marks individual triumph.

  The talk had begun with a tribute to Eigen’s friend Katchalsky, the Israeli neurobiologist who’d died a month before in the massacre at the Tel Aviv airport. Eigen began with Katchalsky’s work on the analogy between electrical and chemical systems; he concluded with a comparison of the nucleic transcendence to the transcendence of the synaptic feedback system which gave promise of what his nineteenth century countryman would have called an Übermensch.

  The marvelous two hours sent Merriwether up the mountain in a kind of ecstasy. He felt, without detail, without conception, that Eigen’s notions would fill the void in his own book. He left Cynthia in the cabin and walked down to the stream. Pine odor saturated the air. Survivors, DNA, Eigen, the structure of truth, and yes, Merriwether felt it—himself, his children. Behind them, the contributing dead, Katchalsky, the decomposed states, the house, the family. States decay, survivors survive. The misery, the waste, the trash of the last years somehow led here to the moon-washed water in which the trees stood out with a clarity obscured by the very color of daylight. You need darkness for clarity (moonlit darkness). A jet light moved above the mountain, followed, seconds later, by a bridal train of sound. Charged by everything, Merriwether feels something there. Yes, understanding trailing event. Light and sound issue together but register separately. The depth of love after loss. The way of human beings. Self-catalytic forms, fed by errors, and so perpetuated. Love, family, Cambridge, mentality. Linkage. Transmission. Evolving.