by Owen Thomas
“Tommy.”
“Tommy Kaye! That’s right. We borrowed Tommy Kaye’s beat-up beast of a van and nursed that thing all the way to Chicago and back. Must have broken down six times.”
Working on his second strip of bacon, Hollis laughed and shook his head as if to himself; as if lost in unbidden reverie. “And every time that thing broke down you decided that the engine just needed a rest and that the best thing we could do was take the opportunity to make love in the back. Remember that?”
… would nearly double the projected federal budget deficit over the next decade. Since 2001, the U.S. has deployed more than 1 million troops to those two countries.
“And, of course, you were so full of it back then. I just took instruction and did as I was told. Left the key in the ignition and headed on into the back and there you were, ready to go.” He laughed a little louder and shook his head again. “I was so sore after that weekend, contorting myself around that makeshift bed. Like I’d been in a rodeo. We must’ve done it a dozen times in three days.”
Susan looked at him inscrutably over her coffee. She took a sip and then set the mug down on the table. “What do you mean ‘full of it?’”
“What?”
“You said that back then I was ‘full of it’. What do you mean? Full of what?”
“Oh. Life, I guess. Self-possessed. Confident. Mischievous. Unconcerned with what others thought of you. You know, young and full of it. Master of your own destiny.”
“And now I’m old and not so full of life any more, is that it?”
Hollis looked up at his wife of thirty-seven years and chewed at her contemplatively for a moment, then took a sip of his own coffee. “I wasn’t insulting you, Susan. Everyone changes.”
“Sure doesn’t sound like a very good or appealing change to me, Hollis.”
The familiar fog started to roll in over the table, coming for him. It wanted to gather him up in billowy arms, secreting him from view, dampening all sound but his own inner voice. It came from nowhere, over her shoulders and over the top of her head, spilling down over her face onto the table, obscuring her half-eaten eggs, then pillowing up between them so that she seemed farther and farther away. And as it rolled and plumed, the fog sang its song. Susan would never understand the subtler truths; not those truths beyond the veil of emotion; beyond the ego. Not because she was incapable, but because she was unwilling. She chose to be too defensive to see things clearly. She chose to be too wrapped up in how the truth would make her look in the end. She chose to be instantly taken in and utterly convinced, by the most superficial of impressions: for Susan the truth comes from the thirty-something man reading a teleprompter on the T.V. Truth comes from the movies and glossy magazines. Age is all about wrinkles. Meditation in the nude must be about jerking off. Staying out late with a young woman must be about sex. Deeper consciousness could not be seen and, therefore, did not exist. All he could do was lay his truth, the truth, at her feet and back away. She would have to choose to pick it up or to leave it. But she would not be taught. She would not be convinced. Not by him. It was time, said the fog, and he agreed, to go to the study and trim the bonsai.
…political capital and I intend to spend it.
“Hollis?”
“Mmm.”
“I said, it doesn’t sound like a very appealing change.”
“MmmHmm. Everyone changes.”
“Okay, fine, everyone changes. Well, why don’t you tell me the ways you think I have changed.”
“…”
“Hollis?”
“Hmm?”
“How have I changed?”
“Susan…”
“No, really. I’d like to know how you think I’ve changed.”
“You’re fine.”
“You think I’m the only one getting old? You think you’re immune?”
“You’re fine, Susan. Chronologically, we all get older. Me too.”
“Oh, I get it. We’re back to the you’re only as old as you think you are nonsense.”
Hollis finished his eggs and stood up from the table. The fog lifted him from his chair by the elbows. He carried his plate to the sink and ran it under the water. Susan swiveled to watch him.
“Hollis?”
“MmmHmm.”
“Are you going to tell me what you meant?”
“I didn’t mean anything. You’re fine.”
“You’re telling me that I’ve started thinking old? That I’ve let myself go before my time? Is that it?”
“Mmm… Don’t know. Guess you’ll just have to try to figure that out.”
It was the wrong thing to say. Even the fog around him convulsed a little at the comment, which was not conducive to mere evasion and extrication. Hollis had reached through the fog and given her a good poke in the eye. It was a provocative statement; an aggressive act. You’ll just have to try to figure that out, he had said, suggesting that perhaps the real problem here was a lack of intellectual horsepower; that he was the patient master who knew the answer and she the student still groping in the dark for a clue. That’s how she would take it, anyway. Perhaps he did feel a bit embarrassed about the morning’s meditation after all. Perhaps he did feel sexually rejected. Perhaps he did feel like he had made sacrifices in the name of marital fidelity that were not only unappreciated by his wife, but entirely disbelieved. Whatever the reason, Hollis did not bother to second-guess his own motives. It was done. The fog dissipated from around him, spiraling down the sink with the running water.
“Oh, really? You’re going to leave it to me – stupid little me – to figure it out?”
“Oh, Susan…look…I wasn’t saying…”
“Well how about this: you’re only as old as your circumstances allow. You want to know what that means, Hollis?”
“Susan…”
“It means that while you have been out doing your thing all of these years, I have been raising three children and folding underwear and making sure we all have something to eat and something to wear and someplace neat and clean to live in. Meanwhile, you’re out doing whatever it is you do in order to feel young and full of it.”
“Wait just a minute there. You think I had nothing to do with food, clothing and a very nice place to live? College educations? You think that just fell out of the sky?”
“That’s not what I’m talking about, Hollis. I quit a teaching career. I left some very good opportunities on the table so that I could raise our family. Our family.”
“Two $40,000 remodels to this place.”
“Yes, you’ve spent a lot of money. But…”
“A place for David to live... at his age.”
“At his age? What… tired of bankrolling David? I took a crash course in raising a Down Syndrome child and all these years later the course still isn’t over. Don’t complain to me about open-ended parenthood.”
“Nice cars. Nice appliances.”
“You pay for it all, but then you are absent. For your family, for me, you’re a swell banker who keeps banker’s hours, Hollis.”
“A healthy retirement fund.”
“Retirement. Yeah, how is the retirement coming, Hollis? I thought we were going to travel. I thought we would at least have lots more time together. I saw more of you when you were working. Mostly what you’ve done since you retired is hunker down in your study with case after case of wine and your little pruning shears and your music and your philosophy and all of your opinions about the great unwashed. All of which is perfectly fine except that you share none of it with me – well, except the opinions, I get plenty of those thank you very much – and you… are… absent.”
…esident George W. Bush on Wednesday would give no timetable for an eventual pullout, saying only, "as Iraqis stand up, we will stand down."
“I’m not absent.”
“You are absent. Hollis, you couldn’t even show up on time for your own daughters’ party, and then you left before if was half over.”
“It was a ridiculo
us party. My daughter wasn’t even present.”
“That’s right, she wasn’t. Ever wonder, Hollis, why we never see Tilly?”
“No, I’m not taking the rap for Tilly’s bullshit, Susan. She can come home or not come home. It’s her decision. She’s caught up in the whole Hollywood cesspool. It has nothing to do with me. Nothing.”
“It has everything to do with you, Hollis. You don’t approve of her. You judge her mercilessly. Cesspool? Why should she want to come home to hear that? And then there’s us. She told you she wouldn’t come home until we got counseling. Have you ever known Tilly to back down?”
“I won’t be bullied into one single conversation with Dr. Feelgood Dipshit, who wouldn’t know the first thing about …”
“It doesn’t have to be Dr. Lenz. Pick someone up to your standards.”
“Tilly’s the one who could use counseling. She threw away a perfectly good education and a first rate mind so that she could screw half of Southern California.”
“There you have it. I’m amazed she doesn’t come home to hear that.”
“I won’t be bullied into counseling.”
“Right, so there is no counseling because you won’t go. You refuse to go. It doesn’t matter who the counselor is. That’s just the excuse. Could be anyone. But no deal. As usual, you are absent and completely unaccounted for. You surface for breakfast and you surface for dinner because even Sufi mystics have to eat. But then you’re gone. You’re down to your cave, or you’re off to show sweet little Bethany Koan a good time or you’re off hiding behind the sofa...”
“This is all about last night, isn’t it?”
“What are you talking about?”
“This is all about me taking Beth to Wally Nunn’s retirement party.”
“Beth? Now it’s Beth?”
“That’s what this is about, isn’t it? It’s all clear now.”
“Hollis… I have no issues whatsoever with… Beth.”
“Wrong, Susan. You have worked yourself into a lather this morning because you think I was out screwing Beth last night. You look at what could be – what should be – a perfectly innocent relationship and you make completely unfounded assumptions.”
“No. You’re wrong. I don’t care one bit what you and Beth were up to last night and I’m perfectly prepared to believe that you simply took her to a retirement party. Frankly, I have an easier time believing that than I do believing that Beth – who can clearly have her pick of men – would choose to screw someone three times her age. But hey, I couldn’t care less. My only concerns about last night …”
“Susan…”
“Don’t interrupt. My only concerns about last night are, first, that you never bothered to tell me that you were planning on leaving before dinner. That’s just a matter of common courtesy. I mean, I’ve got dinner in the oven, Mae’s sprawled on the carpet with a concussion, Ben’s all upset, and you’re just out the door with a wink and a wave.”
“The problem was not that I left, Susan, it was that I left with Beth.”
“You’re interrupting. Second, you were no help in any aspect of that party. I did absolutely everything, as usual.”
“The wine did not just buy itself.”
“And third, and far more important, it bothers me that you cared more about Wally Nunn’s retirement party and whatever benefit it might have had for your little eye-candy companion, than a celebration for your own daughter.”
“I was being helpful to the daughter of a good friend.”
“You’ve met the guy once, Hollis. Mr. Mitsubishi…”
“Akahito Takada.”
“Whatever. You met him once. A long time ago. For a week. And I’ll say it again. I don’t think you were screwing Bethany Koan. I don’t think you’re quite her speed and, furthermore, I think you get too much satisfaction out of insisting that you passed on a sexual opportunity for the sake of some bullshit claim to purity.”
… violence in Iraq this month has killed 36 U.S. troops, including 20 marines based in Ohio towns.
“Susan. Wait. Wait. What are you saying? That I… that I…”
“I’m saying that fidelity is a big moral power play for you. You like to swing it around like a club. For all I know Bethany… sorry, Beth … could have run off with some hot young banker at the party and you’d be standing in this kitchen telling me that you turned her down because you are, after all, infallible.”
“Well, that’s just…you’ve topped yourself, Susan. That’s just insane.”
“You’re the one who likes to make snap judgments of infidelity. Not me.”
“What?”
“I wasn’t going to comment on your trip down memory lane, but you’ve got it all wrong. We borrowed Tommy Kaye’s van to go see my parents. We rode with Rick Patterson and Duncan Simms and Laura Compton to see Buffalo Springfield.”
“What?”
“Yes. We got separated at the concert and Smithy and I were the first ones back.”
“No, no, no….”
“Yes, Hollis. Smithy and I were the first ones back to the hotel and when you and the others showed up you were instantly convinced – instantly convinced, Hollis – that we’d been screwing for hours. It ruined the whole trip. You sulked all the way back to Kent State. You wouldn’t believe a thing I said on the matter. It took a long talk with Duncan to straighten you out. You were an ass. Of course, nothing ever happened.”
“Because you’d never do a thing like that, would you Susan?”
“I never said that. That’s your line, Hollis. That holier-than-thou crap is all yours. It’s like you’ve spent years making this perfect replica of yourself; a flawless two-dimensional doppelganger that knows everything and that does everything right for all the right reasons, and you send him out into the world as your public relations agent. And as sick as that is, the worst part is that you’ve come to believe your own self-serving illusion. You and most other people – except me and Tilly and David – believe that’s the real you. You’ve got so much invested in this guy that he has completely taken over your life, Hollis, as you stay in the shadows, doing a lot of drinking and not much real living. He’s perfect and you’re absent.”
“Baloney.”
“Mistakes? Yeah, I make ‘em all the time, Hollis. My misjudgments are hanging out there for the whole world to see, or at least for you to see and to make sure I never forget them. But when was the last time you admitted to me or anyone else that you had made a significant mistake in judgment? That you did not know something? That you had been wrong? That you were sad or lonely or angry? That you had vices that were difficult to control? That you feel betrayed by the bank for nudging you out early?”
“It’s a business, Susan, with legitimate business concerns.”
“Spare me, Hollis. They showed you the door a year and a half early, and you deserved a whole lot more than that. After what you gave them? But you won’t even acknowledge the injustice. You send out the doppelganger Hollis to take everything in stride, full of understanding and magnanimity. Where is the real Hollis? Absent! Off having a nice glass of Pinot. If you had come home last night and told me that in a moment of lustful weakness you had screwed Beth to within an inch of her young life, at least I’d know you were alive and human. At least I would know that I was not talking to the doppelganger; that I was talking to the real you. But, no. The real you is absent. Instead, I have someone in my kitchen suggesting that I’m crazy for thinking anything of the kind is even possible. Well maybe it is and maybe it isn’t possible, Hollis. Maybe you are all-knowing and pure as the driven snow. But I am sick of being crucified for not being you. I‘m sick of being clubbed by your self-righteousness.”
“Well… I can certainly see where Tilly got her penchant for drama.”
… number of “significant” terrorist attacks reached a record 655 in 2004, up from 175 in 2003...
“Fine. Make a joke. That’s fine. I’m all drama. Here’s what I’m going to do. I really need to
be away from you right now. I had decided I was not going to do this, but this morning really changed my mind. I’m leaving for a week, to get my head together.”
“What? Where? You can’t just…”
“I am. Hollis. I am. I’m going to a retreat with Gayle up to Peebles…”
“Gayle? You mean, tattooed lesbian biker Gayle?”
“It’s a seven-day strategy workshop with Meredith Donner and her group to organize against the war in Iraq.”
“Oh for Chrissakes, Susan… don’t go getting sucked into all of that.”
… ident Bush acknowledged anti-war activists camped outside the ranch, saying he had thought about their cries to pull out of Iraq, but said that he, quote, strongly disagrees. Ms. Sheehan has stayed several days outside the ranch in a peaceful protest of the 2½-year conflict. Mr. Bush said that while he sympathized with Sheehan…
“Haven’t you been paying attention, Hollis? Oh, I forgot, you don’t watch the news. You’re a reader. Well it’s a filthy, bloody mess out there and our government, which has lied to us from the beginning, doesn’t seem to care a whole lot. Somebody’s got to do something, so why not me?”
“Susan… So, what, you’re suddenly an over-night, pie-in-the-sky radical?”
“No, Hollis, I’m a long-time pie-in-the-sky radical who, having been informed by the doppelganger of her absentee husband that she is old-thinking and no longer full of it, is suddenly tired of repressing the urge to get involved.”
“Does this mean you’re a lesbian too?”
“Dunno. Maybe. Guess that’s something you’ll just have to try to figure out.”
“What about Ben?”
“What about Ben? You’re a co-equal parent, suddenly retired with a lot of time on your hands. If you are not as absent as you insist, then it should not be a problem, right?”
“Susan…”
“Well there’s my handsome prince! Good morning, Sunshine! Up so early!”
The change in her tone was so immediate and authentic, it was jarring. Hollis looked to the doorway of the kitchen to find his youngest son standing limp-armed and blinking slowly in his Buckeye’s Pajamas. He padded in on doughy-white feet and wrapped his arms around Susan. She smothered him with kisses and he yawned and giggled and bounced a little. Releasing her, he plodded in towards the sink, grabbing Hollis around the shoulders and squeezing.”
