by Daniel Klein
Digby offers Winny a drinker’s look of suffering and contriteness, guilt and its excuse rolled into one soulful side glance.
“She’s acting funny,” Digby says.
“Geriatric sex will do that to a person,” Winny says. It occurs to Digby that Sylvie might do well to sign up Winny as a consulting editor. “Rumor has it that they’re planning their escape from Louden. Palm Beach.”
“Sounds good to me. Everybody should live happily ever after.”
“But apparently it’s not that easy to make Ronald happy. He has expensive tastes in real estate.”
“Do we suspect Ronald of being an opportunist?” Digby asks.
“Funny word,” Winny says. She offers Digby another in the standard lexicon of drinker’s looks, this one combining world weariness with resignation. In context, it says, ‘all men are opportunists,’ so Digby keeps his trap shut.
“I didn’t think you were that interested in local gossip,” she says after a moment.
“I guess I have too much time on my hands.”
Winny responds with another neck rub. Her hands are still on Digby’s neck when two more afternoon customers walk into Louden Clear—Mary Bonavitacola and June MacLane. Digby ignores his impulse to shrug off Winny’s hand.
“Hi,” Mary says to both of them. She and June keep walking until they reach a booth at the far wall.
“So, how’s your romance with the parson going?” Winny says, giving Digby’s neck a final squeeze.
“It’s strictly spiritual.”
“What a shame,” Winny says mockingly, but at this point Digby is barely listening. He is gazing across the room to where Mary has reached across the table and is maternally patting June’s belly.
“Sweet,” Winny croons. “I wonder what they’ll name him.”
“They?”
Winny flashes Digby an unambiguous smile: it is a smile of triumph. And then she picks up her bag of groceries and leaves.
Trapdoors.
All over the fucking place.
You were right, Mr. Schopenhauer, hopefulness is just a setup for a ruinous fall in this, the worst of all possible worlds.
CHAPTER 15
In fact, Arthur Schopenhauer did not consider himself a pessimist; he thought of himself as a realist, if believing that the entire universe is an illusion can be considered realism, which Professor Schopenhauer did. He was one of the first in Europe to read the teachings of the Buddha and apparently the sound of one hand clapping resonated with him. Echoing the Buddha, Schopenhauer stated that since the whole deal is one big illusion, the ups and downs along the way do not amount to a hill of beans. This actually can be a very comforting philosophy, especially during periods when shit is making repeated contact with the fan.
Digby is more than ready to accept the universe as illusory by the time he returns from Louden Clear to his apartment. In fact, he yearns for that region of full-immersion illusion known as Fool’s Paradise. But he needs a nudge to get there, so he supplements the stupefaction of his afternoon scotches with the mind-body dissociation of a joint. For obvious reasons, all resolutions of character improvement have been called off.
But chemistry alone does not do the trick; his mind, though seriously whacked, keeps returning to Mary’s affectionate tap of June’s womb, and to Felicia Hastings’ maddening and inscrutable ad nixing. He needs further distraction, so he snaps on his TV.
Playing there is the film, What Dreams May Come, featuring the mind-numbing actor, Robin Williams, on a Cook’s tour of paradise. Digby had started viewing the film a few days earlier as part of his private heaven-in-the-movies film festival in preparation for his article on same. Before the trapdoors started flopping open in front of him, Digby had been feeling so smart and peppy that he gave the assignment to himself. Who better than droll old Digby? The film action picks up where Digby left off several days ago with the Robin Williams character, who has just arrived in paradise, meeting his old pooch. Says Robin, “Boy, I screwed up. I’m in dog heaven.”
It only gets worse. The heaven in What Dreams May Come is depressingly gloopy. The color scheme is Renoir on LSD. Doggies fly. Flowers do the hoochie coochie. Rainbows swirl like kite tails. Robin thinks it’s divine. Digby, on the other hand, is convinced that Eternal Nothingness would be a far better option. He finally clicks off the television set. He lies down on his bed and places the telephone on his chest.
Digby is dialing Mary’s number knowing full well that her answering machine will pick up. The reason he knows this is because he just dialed her number two minutes ago. And two minutes before that. He is now just sober enough to know that this constitutes compulsive behavior; but he is also just stoned enough to know that compulsive behavior is justified when you have recently learned that the woman with whom you just may happen to be in love is in some kind of consensual relationship with another woman who happens to be pregnant.
Mary’s answering machine picks up. She probably has caller-ID. This time, the moment he hangs up, his phone rings. Mary has had second thoughts!
“Hello?”
“Hi!” Is it Mary? Digby tries to concentrate.
“Good to hear from you,” he says.
“Dad, are you stoned?” Digby’s daughter.
“Of course not, Sylvie.” The new world order where middle-class parents lie to their children about their drug habits.
“You sound funny,” Sylvia says.
“I try.”
“Listen, I’ve got some major news.”
“I’m all ears.”
“I’m getting married.”
Digby’s concentration momentarily splinters. Who is getting married? Mary? To June?
“Congratulations,” he says, recomposing. “Who’s the lucky . . .”
“Ahmed. He’s a professor. Statistics. We met online.”
“A, uh, a dating service?”
“You’re so old-fashioned, Dad.”
“I’ve begun to realize that lately.”
“Ahmed was a fan of The Unmade Bed. He wrote comments every day. Plot ideas. One thing led to another.”
“Life imitates art.”
“Actually, I’m selling my half of the site.”
“Your half of the bed, so to speak.”
“Whatever. The wedding’s in June. Corny, huh? You’re invited, by the way.”
“I’m honored, Sylvie. Do I get to give away the bride?”
“Not really. It’s a Muslim ceremony.”
Full sobriety is staging a comeback, but along with it comes the overwhelming feeling that Digby is adrift in an unfamiliar universe. “Is your mother coming?”
“Of course. Jesus, that’s not a problem for you, is it?”
“Not at all. Men and women sit separately in a mosque anyhow, right?”
“It’s not in a mosque, Dad. It’s at the Palo Alto Hills Country Club.”
“Sounds delightful.”
“And don’t worry, Mom and Phil are paying for it.”
“Phil?”
“Duh-uh. Her husband.”
Digby is at a loss for words.
“You didn’t know?” Sylvie says. Digby thinks he even detects a trace of mercy in her voice.
“I have a pile of unread email,” he says lamely. “Is he nice? This Phil. Have you met him?”
“They came out to visit. Phil Weinstein. You know him, right?”
“It doesn’t ring a bell.”
“He used to be Phil Winston, but he changed it back to his grandfather’s name. It’s an identity thing.”
Phil Winston? Phil Winston the shmuck?
“I worked for a guy by that name at the Voice. But it’s probably a common name.”
“No, that’s the guy,” Sylvia says. “He told me he was an old friend of yours.”
Digby laughs. Even Schopenhauer would have a good giggle at this.
“What’s funny about that?” Sylvia asks.
“I’m laughing with happiness,” he says. “For Mom. Mom and Phil.”<
br />
Actually, this is only partially true. Another reason he is laughing is he now sees Phil Winston-Weinstein in a new light—as a man who will save him alimony payments.
“All is good in God’s heaven,” Digby says.
“Are you being sarcastic?”
“Not at all. I couldn’t be happier for you, Sylvie. I mean that. I hope you are very happy. Give my best to Ahmed.” Much to Digby’s surprise and pleasure, he really does mean every word of it.
“Okay.” Sylvia sounds bewildered by her father’s generosity of spirit.
Jesus, do I come off as that uncharitable to her most of the time? Digby experiences a spasm of parental guilt that convinces him he deserves to fall through every trapdoor from here to eternity.
After a moment, Digby says, “Guess I’ll stop reading The Unmade Bed.”
“It was getting boring anyhow, right?”
“Well, there was more talk and less turnover,” Digby says, then adds, “I was starting to miss the statistical element.” He immediately regrets this last; he doesn’t wish to cast any aspersions on her intended’s profession. But thankfully Sylvie laughs. Goodbye, goodbye. Digby curls up on his bed, closes his eyes, and the phone rings.
“Sylvie?”
“I guess we need to talk.” Mary!
Digby makes himself a strong mug of Camellia sinensis; he needs utter clarity for his conversation with Mary. He follows that with a cold shower, dresses in fresh shirt and pants, and heads out into the lukewarm night.
At one in the morning, illuminated by a half-moon, the streets of Louden are calendar picturesque: the New England village is asleep, at peace. On the other hand, the vacant streets also look embalmed, like they have been hit by a neutron bomb. “There are no facts, only interpretations,” to quote Mary’s T-shirt.
Instead of devoting the next issue of Cogito to sex, how about going all the way and making it about love? The Oxford linguistic philosophers say that ‘love’ is the vaguest denotation in the lexicon, that at best it is just a reflexive response on the same order as reacting to an itch. So why all this poetry about love making the world go ’round? More to the point, how is a middle-aged man supposed to know if he really has fallen in love with a woman with whom he has only rendezvoused a handful of times; or if he is so far gone that he wouldn’t know love if it hit him in the face like a pasta fazool?
Mary awaits Digby in the doorway of the Universalist Unitarian Church wearing a loose-fitting jogging outfit that looks like it sometimes doubles as sleepwear. The moonlight is just bright enough for Digby to make out next Sunday’s sermon title on the placard in the window: “But Seriously, Folks—Isn’t Life Just a Big Joke?”
“I’m making tea,” she greets him. “You want?”
“Yes, thank you.”
Moments later they are sitting across from one another at a small, drop-leaf table in the pastor’s study which, apparently, is also her bedroom—a futon covered by a patchwork comforter lies beside the far wall. They both sip tea silently for a moment.
“I still haven’t figured out why I need to tell you this,” she begins. “At the very least I didn’t want you to hear about it from anybody else. But telling you—telling you now—doesn’t mean anything more than just telling you, if that makes any sense.”
Digby nods. He is now as sober as Thomas De Quincey. He is also shaky.
“Okay, here goes. Reuben—my husband. No, both of us wanted to have children. Well, one, at least.”
Digby nods again.
“But there were problems. In my uterus. Fibroid things. Every time I conceived, it wouldn’t hold. Nowhere for it to attach to the wall. So the next step was to conceive in a test tube, scrape me clean, and then attach the little bugger fast before the fibroids grew back.” She smiles weakly and Digby returns the smile just as weakly.
“Then just after we completed step one—the test tube—Reuben was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. A death sentence. They put the embryo in the freezer and that was that.”
Mary stops. She looks forlorn and all Digby wants to do is hug her, pat her hair, and tell her that everything is going to be all right, but he has no idea if that is what she wants or needs, so he just says, “Go on when you’re ready, okay?”
“I lied in my sermon,” she says, looking straight at Digby. “In my article for you too. I mean, about those last days together on the Cape. I left out a crucial part. Reuben and I weren’t silent all the time we watched those sunsets. We talked. A lot. We talked about what in the name of God happens next. Neither of us believed in heaven or any other kind of afterlife. And that Eternal Now thing? Well, it really was incredibly beautiful, truly transcendental—I didn’t lie about that. But it didn’t do the trick, you know? Not in lived time. Not for a man who was going to die in a few days with a whole lot of his life still unlived.”
“I can understand that,” Digby says.
“The only option he could believe in was, you know, the chain of life. He was a mathematician and he had a mathematical term for what he meant—something called the continuum hypothesis.”
“He wanted you to have his baby.”
“Yup.”
“So you promised him you would.”
“I tried to promise him, but he wouldn’t accept it. He said it was stupid and selfish of him and it wouldn’t make any difference anyhow because he would be dead. ‘Eternally dead,’ as he put it.”
“But you wanted to keep that promise anyhow.”
“Yes, I did. But it didn’t turn out to be so easy. Medically, I mean. New problems in my uterus, complications.”
“I think I know the rest,” Digby says softly to her.
“Just part of the rest, Digby. Finding a surrogate to carry the baby and June volunteering for the job. I guess you know that part.”
“There’s more?”
“Yes.”
Then Mary starts to weep. At first, it is just a little catch in her throat but then, before she turns her head away from Digby, tears form in the corners of her eyes and begin to slide down her flushed cheeks. This time Digby allows his instincts to prevail; he stands and walks to her, places his hands gently on her shuddering shoulders, and whispers, “It’s okay, friend. It’s okay.” Meaningless words, words of comfort are; they are on a par with ‘love’ for nebulousness. But the thing is, they are the best the heart has in its vocabulary.
“I’m an asshole!” Mary cries out.
“Please, Mary.”
She straightens up and Digby treads softly back to his seat.
“No, honestly. I’m a total asshole,” Mary says, now back in control of her voice. “For starters, I hate the whole surrogate womb business. It’s like a modern version of a wet nurse. Leaving the icky part of childbearing to the servants.”
“It sounds like you didn’t have any choice in the matter.”
“It still rankles. But that’s hardly the worst of it.”
“Something about June,” Digby says.
“Yes, June. We’ve been friends ever since Reuben and I moved up here. She’s a good person, you know. Like everybody else, she puts on a good show of being a tough cookie, but it’s not easy for her.”
“Being gay?”
“All the gender philosophy in the world doesn’t do a bit of good when you go home for Thanksgiving to a family of Baptists.”
Digby knows whereof Mary speaks from his bit of shameless eavesdropping. Again he nods.
“She was wonderful to me after Reuben died. Understanding, comforting. She virtually moved in and took care of me.”
“And you told her about your promise to Reuben.”
“To myself! My promise to myself!” Mary snaps, then, “I’m sorry. But I always need to remember that. Reuben absolutely refused my pledge. He said it wasn’t fair. Not fair at all. The fact is he died thinking I wasn’t going to go through with it, so it’s all mine now. My decision.”
“Okay.”
“I need to walk,” Mary says.
They h
ead out into the night, Mary leading the way. No words now. Blessed silence. She takes them to the edge of town where a thick spruce forest announces the first rise of the mountains. Mary points to the sky.
“That is still the biggest comfort in the universe to me,” she says quietly. “The smallness of my life. The speckiness of it.” She laughs. “Not very profound, am I?”
“But seriously, folks,” Digby says.
Mary laughs again, squeezes his arm, then lets go and sits on a large rock under a spreading spruce.
“There’s a lot of legal higgledy-piggledy you have to go through to arrange for a surrogate pregnancy,” she says. “We had a local lawyer handle it. Bob Baskerton.”
Bonner Hastings’ attorney, as Digby recently learned. “Was he up to it? Doesn’t sound like a common item in a small town practice.”
“Bob did his homework. There aren’t that many variables. Payments for care of the surrogate, obstetric bills, that sort of thing. And then there’s the nitty-gritty, like does the surrogate get any visiting rights?”
“Sounds like it could get tricky.” Digby sits down on the rock also, but with his back to hers. Their relative positions feel like they will make this conversation easier, as if their words will have to patiently circumnavigate the Earth to reach one another.
“It didn’t seem so at the time,” Mary goes on. “June and I are good friends, we live in the same town. Bob—Bob Baskerton—said we should think about it carefully. One of us might move away, that sort of thing. But we said we could work it out if something like that came up, so we checked the box for ‘full visiting rights.’ ”
Digby pauses a moment before he says, “I have a confession to make.”
His words circle the globe and Mary says, “Go ahead.”
“I overheard June talking to her mother at the office. I didn’t have a clue that you were involved at that point. June said to her mother, ‘We’re having a baby.’ I thought she was talking about a girlfriend, her partner, whoever that was. That they were having a baby together. She didn’t sound like some dispassionate surrogate.”
