Walter Falls

by Gillis, Steven;

  “On Fetzer Street, yes. I inherited the property from my uncle several years ago.”

  “I see. And you’ve a mortgage?”

  “I refinanced, and put the money back into the Review.”

  “And your Review has other loans, I imagine?”

  Again, he answered, “Yes. Capital Financial and First National were recommended to me.”

  “Ah,” giving what I hoped was not too telling a grin, “then I’m confused. You object to Jack Gorne’s purchase of Wintmore Towers because it facilitated the city’s closing of Melstar Clinic, and yet you’re doing business with Capital Financial which holds the papers on some of the worst tenements in Renton and deals daily with the most notorious slumlords in the state. And First National, I happen to know, loans large sums of cash to companies such as Stenson Carbines and Dillar Chemical which you vilify in your Review. This, of course, means the interest you pay on your loans is being funnelled right back into the pockets of the same firms you claim to oppose. Ironic, isn’t it?” I glanced at Gee. “And yet, business is business. You have your needs and Jack Gorne has his needs, too.”

  I was full of myself, delighted to have put Tod in his place in front of my wife. All this talk about Jack, and by inference me, being pariahs devouring the city for our own personal gain had hit a nerve and I wanted Gee to see what a hypocrite her friend turned out to be, that in the grand scheme of things it was men like Jack Gorne—and me!—who provided Renton with security and structure, the fruits of our labor that helped people put money in the bank, paid for food and mortgages, built houses and bridges, allowed children to attend college, supported charities and hospitals, and paid off debts. In contrast, Tod Marcum’s work—the essays published in his dyspeptic little review—consisted of nothing more than petty finger-pointing, griping and whining, a tearing down of the world in worthless protest, superfluous and self-indulgent as he partnered himself with the very institutions he derided as avaricious and socially impure.

  Tod ran his left hand back through his hair, somewhat coy, and smiling as always, apologized then. “I’m sorry, Walter. I’m afraid I’ve given you the wrong impression. I should have been more clear. I meant that Capital and First National were recommended to me, but in doing my research, I came up with the same information as you. You’re right to think I’d be making a mistake to secure my loans at those institutions. What money I borrowed came through Berinfel Mutual.”

  “You know Berinfel, don’t you, Walter?” Gee’s tone departed from its earlier tease, was less playful and more inculpating. “Or doesn’t Ed Porter allow you to deal with those sort of lenders?”

  “But sure,” I rallied clumsily to my own defense. (Berinfel specialized in socially conscious investments, minority programs and mutual funds which—in truth—I dealt with only sparingly in all my years at P and E.) “Walter, Walter, Walter,” Gee’s voice in my head. I was afraid to look at her just then, felt my face turn red, yet did my best to pretend Tod’s explanation impressed me, and went so far as to compliment him on his research. “It isn’t often people are as thorough as you,” I laughed nervously and a bit too loud, and without the slightest idea of what else to say, I offered, “If you ever want to make real money, Tod, you come and see me.”

  He considered my gesture, considered the source, then smiled again, and reaching over toward my wife, retrieved the final eggroll from Gee’s plate, securing it like a ruby prize, like a lover’s tit, the lush plump nipple of which he sampled first with his fingers, rolling the nub back and forth as if to savor the surface even more, before placing it on his lips, across his tongue, and into his mouth. “Thanks, Walter,” he said. “That’s mighty generous of you,”

  “Of course, of course, of course.”

  CHAPTER 4

  “What a world, what a world!” in the immortal words of the slowly ablating Wicked Witch of the West, who pronounced with such exactitude from her hissing puddle the very axiom I now live by—“What a world, indeed.” I also feel on the verge of melting, and looking about my room at Renton General can’t help but blubber, “What a remarkable confusion.”

  I have at home—or more accurately what used to be home—a large collection of books and once enjoyed surrounding myself with works of poetry and fiction. I find the words upon the printed page provide a finite form of opinion, never changing, the consistency allowing me to believe the world reliable and coherent. Driving home with Gee from the Dunlaps’ party, I recalled one such poem by Auden, who wrote about fresh love’s betrayal, where every day over green horizons a new deserter rode away, while birds muttered of ambush and treason, and standing later at my bedroom window, I could hear the black crows cawing, “Tod, Tod, Tod!”

  The events of that night at the party wore me down, and not used to feeling as I did, I experienced peculiar symptoms. My body became unreliable while my otherwise sound sleep was riddled with bad dreams. In the days that followed, as Tod phoned and chatted with Gee as he always did about some such meeting, petition, at rally in support of a new liberal cause, I grew anxious and alarmed. I’d hear Gee laugh at something Tod said and the sound of her joy would chill me, her smile—too lovely!—making me desperate to feel her in my arms.

  Two weeks after the party, Gee spent several afternoons working with Tod on an article entitled “The Politics of Convenience: Big Business and the Subjugating of Community.” Twice I was phoned at my office and told by Gee that Rea was with Sheri, our sitter, down the street. “Tod’s ordered sandwiches. I’ll be home around eight.”

  As a rule, I try not to dwell on incidents which result in disappointment or otherwise rattle the foundation of my perceived safe and infrangible world. Such a strategy, repressive in its tendencies but self-protecting nonetheless, allows me to feel secure, mistakes at work weathered with eyes closed, my greatest relief coming when someone else screws up and earns Ed Potter’s vitriol. At home, quarrels with Gee are handled with equal denial, disputes dismissed as fast as I can manage. I am docile in love, and remain always eager to end a fight by offering reconciliation and compromise to my wife, and would have continued to do so forever—I’m sure—were it not for Tod Marcum.

  Peeved, I used Rea as the reason to register my first complaint and suggested our daughter was being neglected, that her mornings were already filled with school and then day care until Gee picked her up. “And now you’re gone past dinner.” My tone was pleading, my charge manipulative, inappropriate, and self-serving; as a mother, Gee was otherwise above reproach.

  “I’m trying to meet a deadline, Walter,” she explained. “I don’t like it any more than you.”

  “All the same,” I didn’t retract a word, and the next afternoon—as a consequence of my disapproval—Gee took Rea with her to the Kerrytown Review. That evening, my daughter came home exclaiming the virtues of “Uncle Tod!” I went into my den and closed the door where I searched long and hard for just the right book.

  Late that same July, Gee invited Tod to dinner.

  “He likes you, Walter. I’m sure in time you two will become good friends.” What reckless sort of wide-eyed fancy motivated my wife to think this way I didn’t know and I approached the date with severe reservation.

  Tod arrived just after six, dressed in his usual jeans, a pale green shirt, and old leather moccasins that looked for all the world like slippers. His hair was damp and brushed straight back, and eager to curry favor he came bearing gifts: a bottle of red wine and a small coloring book for Rea. My daughter is a bright, energetic child, intellectually curious yet shy around most adults, and it rankled me when she saw fit to move from behind her mother and offer Tod an embrace. I poured two glasses of wine, whiskey for me, and a bit of juice in a child’s plastic cup.

  Sheri came from down the street to watch Rea while we ate. Gee had chosen a spinach and cheese lasagna to serve, and while I wasn’t a finicky eater and rarely cared what we had, seeing my wife so eager to please Tod—who didn’t eat meat—put me in a mood to quarrel. In that mome
nt food seemed to reveal the soul of all relationships, the conjoining of epicurean preferences symbolizing the health and commitment of a couple, bringing lovers closer together while giving them an opportunity to profess, “Oh yes, we like that.” and “Why don’t we try the new Korean restaurant tonight?” or “How about calf’s liver and kugel?” Standing in the kitchen an hour before Tod arrived, I argued, “Wouldn’t a sirloin be better? How about a barbecue? I know you’d prefer some potato salad to go with a nice fat steak.”

  “Not tonight.”

  “Why not?”

  “I already told you. Tod’s a vegetarian.”

  “Chicken’s a good compromise,” I sounded childish.

  “Why are you bothering me about this?” Gee used the flat side of a knife to push carrots into the salad bowl. I watched the motion of her hand as if she was performing some remarkable task. She was wearing a pair of tan shorts which fit her a bit too nicely and flattered the length of her legs. Her hair was combed back and tied off by an orange sash, the top three buttons of her bone-colored shirt undone near her breast. “There’s nothing wrong with vegetables,” she said, and added without turning around, “we eat too much meat as it is.”

  “Really?” I looked at her with some surprise. “And when did you decide that?”

  “Recently.”

  “I see.”

  The dining room table was set with maroon placemats and matching cloth napkins. I positioned myself at the head, with Gee and Tod on opposite sides. The arrangement seemed to favor me as I expected to direct the course of our conversation from my end, and only as we began to eat did I realize my error. Back and forth over servings of lasagna, salad, and bread, Tod and Gee chatted endlessly. I nodded when called upon to do so but otherwise said little, watching my wife in profile, her features sharp, her chin and cheeks, her mouth and the measure of her nose all lovely, yet bearing a certain inscrutability which softened when Tod made her laugh.

  I continued to listen as they discussed a series of new essays and authors and matters involving the Kerrytown Review. They spoke about the recent slashing of Picasso’s “Nude in Front of the Garden” at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the petition of the Klan to march in New York City, and the current conflict in Renton involving the mayor’s decision to crack down on the homeless and arrest all vagrants who violated the least letter of the law. “So, Walter,” Tod reached forward and poured more wine into Gee’s glass. (There was something familiar in his offering, a casualness which made it seem he’d extended the same gesture to my wife a hundred times before.) “What’s your opinion on the mayor’s decision to rid Renton of its homeless?”

  I watched Gee sip her drink, then turned toward Tod and replied reflectively, careful with my answer. “I think the mayor’s intentions are sound, but his policy is flawed.”

  “Then you don’t feel homelessness should be treated as a crime?”

  “No,” this struck me as a safe response, but then I made the mistake of adding, “Of course, there are laws about vagrancy that must be enforced to keep our city inhabitable. The rights of all residents must be considered, not simply the homeless.”

  “And what exactly do you mean by inhabitable?”

  “I mean no one is eager to shop or eat downtown when they know the panhandlers are out in force. Parts of the city are lost, restaurants and businesses suffer.”

  “Alright,” he set down his fork, “and if not arresting the homeless and running them out of town, what would you suggest?”

  “I don’t know,” I was afraid to be any more specific. “It’s a difficult problem. What would you do?”

  Tod pushed his right hand through his hair, his blue eyes passing once—a bit too cozily—onto Gee, before glancing back at me to answer, “I would build shelters. I would allocate resources and find ways to offer assistance. I would do whatever had to be done to provide these people with some sense of security and dignity in their life.”

  “That’s a generous sentiment,” I couldn’t help myself, and felt a need to explain, “but a city’s resources are limited. There’s just so much that can be done.”

  “And spending money on people who are indigent and don’t otherwise contribute to the city’s coffers is unsound from a fiscal perspective?”

  “That isn’t what I said,” I stopped Tod before he could back me completely into a corner. “All human beings deserve charity and kindness,” I glanced toward my wife. “It’s a question of what the city can afford.”

  “There are things the city can’t afford to ignore, Walter,” Gee rejoined. As lessons go, I should have learned something from our conversation at the Dunlaps and not allowed myself to be drawn in further, but here was Gee—the sash in her hair removed so that her red locks, lightened by the summer’s sun, fell handsomely across her cheek—aligning herself again with Tod, and against all better judgement, I said, “It’s a bit more complicated than that though, isn’t it? Some of these people don’t even want help. Some prefer to be on the street.”

  “That’s an excuse,” Gee shook her head. “It’s always a strategy of the haves to find some measure of culpability within the have nots.”

  Sweet Gee! I slumped back in my chair, biting at my inner lip while trying to recall the last time I said something—said anything!—which she favored. (The other night in bed, I was in the middle of reading Jim Harrison’s The Road Home and casually commented on what an excellent book I thought it was, to which Gee replied, “Harrison’s a misogynist,” as if the one word, whether true or not, summed up the whole of his parts and made me guilty by association.) I wanted to ask her then—as I thought to do at the Dunlaps—why she was so eager to attack me of late. (Where does love go, Gee? What does it turn into? Where were Cupid and Aphrodite when you needed them? Where was the bounty and mirth, the separation between amity and misanthropy? What was the matter, dear, and how could anyone ever feel safe?) Would it be too much for her to acknowledge that perhaps I had a point? “Christ,” I said, but instead of continuing, fell silent again, and wished I never spoke.

  “Walter’s right,” Tod raised his eyebrows suddenly and extended me the sort of look that said, “There, you see? Even your wife disagrees,” while pretending nonetheless to come to my defense. “The issue is quite complicated and we can’t expect to resolve as much over dinner. In the meantime, everyone’s entitled to their opinion.”

  At the very least, I should have gone into the kitchen then and poured myself another drink, but I was frustrated and unwilling to accept Tod’s assistance, and so I blurted out, “It’s more than my opinion though, Tod. I’m trying to be reasonable here. I’m grounding my views in reality while you’re tossing out this idea of allocating funds to build shelters as if laying one’s hands on that kind of resource can be grabbed out of thin air.”

  “Any worthwhile vision must begin with bold ideas,” Tod maintained his cool.

  “That’s a luxury of your profession,” I tapped my middle fingers on the table. “All you journalists and writers love to bandy about your ideas. You make the most untenable arguments while treating reasonableness and practicality as dirty words. I’m sorry,” I said, and found the nerve to look at Gee, “but you’re like that guy on television who twirls plates atop broomsticks, waiting to see what will stay and what will crash. The truth doesn’t matter as long as you can keep the trick going. You writers,” I said again, only here Gee cut me off.

  “We writers present truths that enable the reader to draw their own conclusions,” she responded with her voice pitched across the word “we” as deliberately as if she’d gotten up and thrown her arms around Tod.

  “But that’s just it,” I had no choice but to continue, “you don’t present the truth. You present what you want the reader to believe.”

  “The goal of any good writer is to establish his position in the best possible way while staying true to the facts,” Tod said, to which I countered at once, “And what does that mean, true to the facts? Your Review is politica
lly left of center. This is an editorial choice. Everything you print is slanted by design, all the social commentaries, essays, and articles you print are influenced by how you want a set of circumstances to be interpreted. You adopt a perspective, manipulate and massage it until it shines and what could be easier than that?”

  “Presenting personal convictions in a public forum is not as easy as you think,” he remained still calm, as if my outburst amused him.

  “No?” I was less composed. “Try doing what I do. Try working with the facts and figures as they exist. Try presenting your ideas when your resources are finite and subjectivity is not an option. People in business have to play the hand that’s dealt them, Tod. We don’t have the luxury of casting about for quixotic ideals. There’s no personal perspective for us. The market is cast in stone. Each investment and the consequence that follows is absolute. I can’t hide behind philosophical mumbo jumbo when a client loses cash. I can’t resort to platitudes when the economy is off. Imagine if you had to write a piece using no verbs or words beginning with the letter T. Think how limited you’d be in what you could do. Those are the conditions I have to deal with every day.”

  “And yet,” Tod seemed not at all fazed by what I said, “at least in your profession there’s the finality of a specific tally. There’s a sense of security in knowing exactly what you’re dealing with, the numbers not being able to lie as the expression goes. You have the luxury,” he winked at me then, “of operating from a point of certainty, of basing your decisions on concrete facts, whereas in every phase of what Geni and I do, the vast majority of our battle is sifting through prevarication, perjury, and distortion in order to find the truth. Imagine the difficulty of a writer who wants to be honest when, as you describe, everyone is spinning their own tale. Taking away my verbs and the letter T is the least of my concerns. Do you see what I mean?”