Unraveling

by Owen Thomas

  I stood, brushed the dirt off my shorts and jogged past them through the parking lot, reconnecting with the trail that wound back down through the trees into the depths of the park. A wind had picked up, carrying with it the olfactory essence of greater Los Angeles. I could see the sky mottling with the possibility of rain off to the east.

  When I reached the car I took stock of my emotions and told myself that I felt a little better. The exercise had subdued my angst and reinvigorated my sense of purpose. I grabbed a bottle of water out of the trunk and the Pryce Point script out of the front seat and headed back for the hanging gardens to read while the light was still good. I found a picnic table beneath a large tree with long, elegant branches that arched out over the grass. Conical, hot-pink flowers hung like ornaments.

  On the opposite side of the garden, a couple and a pre-teen daughter, were pulling food out of a backpack. Two younger boys, one theirs the other clearly a friend, raced out of the foliage into the clearing. One chasing the other, shouting and waving their arms as though pursued by angry bees, they nearly knocked the girl over before disappearing again out of the clearing and up the trail from which I had come.

  The woman looked at me apologetically and shrugged. I shrugged back and smiled just enough to show that I was unperturbed. But it had been too much of a smile, a little too encouraging or friendly, for the woman’s look lingered and she whispered to the others. The man and the girl each rotated at the waist, turning for a good look.

  I looked back.

  What I saw was a father and his daughter turning together, reorienting in unison, twisting at the torso as they sat on the ground; turning to take me in as just another in a long parade of things of mutual interest in the world; as though they were tuned to the same frequency.

  Inexplicably, I found myself staring directly through their bodies into the foliage behind, only it was not the greenery of Griffith Park I could see, but the deep foliage of Licking County, Ohio, along the shores of Buckeye Lake. I could see my parents unloading the camper with the help of some of their friends, including Rhonda Davenport, thin and vibrant, and her beloved, irascible Jack, who was then still many years away from abandoning her for the afterlife. I could see myself, as though from some omniscient perch, sitting on an old basswood log at the edge of the beach, sulking for having been forced to come while David had unfairly escaped to be with his friends.

  The log stunk like rot, like something had died inside of it but I didn’t care because that was how I felt: rotten and dead inside. I could see myself sitting on that dead tree glaring daggers at the adults, begrudging them every happy moment. I sat on the dead log holding Ben by the wrist out of fear – my mother’s, not my own – that he might suddenly decide to fling himself into Buckeye Lake and drown.

  I looked clean through these people – the man and the girl who was probably his daughter and the woman with her hands in the backpack – and I saw deep into the trees behind them to a place where, so many years ago, my parents were drinking and cutting up with the Davenports around a pit of fire, circled with gray cinderblocks, with the tape player from the camper blaring the Best of Motown out into the dark woods of Licking County, sprawling around the lake that was like wet silver in the moonlight.

  Rhonda and my father were giving each other dancing lessons as everybody except me laughed and made fun. I could see the way my father held Rhonda’s hand and spun her in the firelight and swiveled his hips to the music as though he was showing us all a thing or two; as though beach dancing was suddenly his specialty.

  They had all learned to leave me well enough alone, keenly appreciating that nothing would come from forcing me to participate and that I was better left to sulk and to baby-sit Ben. My father had tried anyway, waving me urgently out of the tent and into the lit circle, but I would not budge or respond. My mother and Jack, next to each other in the dirt, turned to look back at me in unison, rotating at the waist, but I stared through them into the fire, without acknowledging.

  I saw my father give up on me with an exasperated gesture – the back of his hand as if at a mosquito – then turning his back to spin Rhonda around again in the flickering dust as The Marvelettes sang about there being too many fish in the sea. I thought about how I had never gotten the fish – the red beta and the blue beta – my father had promised me years before, and that that had been the point at which he became a different man to me; the point at which everything had begun to change.

  Rhonda laughed and fell to the ground, and then he on top of her, and they all laughed uproariously except for me, lost in the budding revelation that I was not merely angry with my father, but that I actually hated him. And my mother, who was laughing so hard she seemed desperate for air, frozen in mid scream, was so pitiable to me that my feelings for her were barely more charitable. I saw myself crying and wanting out – out of the tent, out of the woods, out of their lives – wanting to walk or hitchhike or hijack the camper. Whatever it took.

  I stared through this man and his daughter, past their blue backpack and off into the trees and bushes beyond, and I could see my brother, fast asleep in his sleeping bag, stirring next to me in our tent. He sat up slowly in his little Winnie-the-Pooh pajamas, his undersized head wobbling on his shoulders, his mouth open in his typically adenoidal expression, and looked at me groggily, blinking in the dim glow. The camp was quiet by then. I could hear frogs and a bird and something splashing in the water across the lake, and whispering from a tent across from where the campfire had once raged, but which by then was only a dull, orange stain in the darkness.

  Without a word, and with an understanding I still cannot fathom, my brother locked his arms around my neck and kissed my face, sweetly, slowly, again and again; not the skin of my cheeks so much as each particular tear, soaking them in like the earth takes the rain.

  CHAPTER 29 – David

  I drive into the sun, west from Lake Moreland and the empty dirt parking lot that has been my vantage point for the past two hours. I have never been a bird watcher until today. Today, they fascinate me. Especially the ducks. Water, land, air, swimming, waddling, flying, diving; those little fuckers can do it all.

  I hit the freeway and head for the city, the late sun flaming a burnt orange over my freshly silvered hood. It has been three weeks since Eddy Mac worked his discount magic on my defiled Civic, but the car still feels like an entirely new machine. More powerful; more responsive; generally more aerodynamic. Even so, people pass me like I am in neutral. Some honk, but I am content to go my own relaxed pace and content, too, in the knowledge that no one is honking because I might be a rapist. My tires feel fat and spongy and I could just as well be in a boat cutting effortlessly through water. I roll down a window to let the air in and the stink out and I wonder if Cee Cee Lewis has ever considered the miracle of ducks. I am powerfully hungry.

  I have no opinion in the debate over the lasting physiological effects of cannabis. While I am reasonably confident that the occasional joint is a damn-site less destructive than the infinitely more prevalent addiction to nicotine or alcohol, I am not so self-deluding as to think that it has no effect at all. If nothing else, there has to be some collateral effect from the Frito-Lay weight gain.

  Nor, however, am I inclined to believe the calculated hysteria about potency: that little Mary Jane, a child of the Sixties, has grown up to be the Mother of Grendel, a savage and merciless beast biting off the heads of men in the new Millennium; or that what may have been a relatively harmless prop of the cultural revolution in this country is now an enemy combatant in the war on drugs only one step less deadly than heroin.

  Whatever the long-term physiological impact of that distinctively pointed leaf, if any, it is not nearly enough to curb my longing for its short-term temporal impact, particularly now that I am out of a job and have little else to occupy my attention except my unpleasantly shapeless future. Whatever pot may do to the body, it works miracles with time, spooling it off of the horizon like ribbon and looping
it into languid, pointless curls of a single continuous moment, uninterrupted by event or concern or need. Pot has a facility with time not at all unlike the facility my former students – bless their pointy little heads – have with wads of masticated gum.

  For this new, relaxed vibe, I have only Caitlyn Carson Lewis to thank. She is well-supplied and generous to a fault; a good combination when it comes to marijuana friendships. I have paid her only in conversation and Frito-Lay wampum and she has asked for nothing more. In the past three weeks, Cee Cee has been to my home six times, each, she claims, an act of pure impulse; a spontaneous turn of the wheel as she traverses the state in a decommissioned ambulance, tending to the sick and destitute. I do not believe her; there is an agenda in there someplace. The dope has not made me less paranoid, it’s just made me care a whole lot less. Cee Cee has an easy, relaxed southern comfort to her manner and she is more than just a little cute in a sporty, quirky sort of way. If she has something up her sleeve other than grade-A ganja … that’s okay by me.

  She usually stays long enough to share a joint or two. We drape ourselves over the furniture blowing blue clouds at the ceiling and talk about anything and nothing; mostly our common academic roots at Tulane, our mutual fondness for New Orleans, the latest insanities of the Bush Administration, the disease of 24-hour news, the cultural psychosis of post-nine-elevenism that has banished all reason from the country, the new caché of Orwellian political irony, art, history, literature, the resurgence of the word “quagmire” in discussions of American foreign policy, the best and worst of American cinema, my work, her family, her work, my family – the words and opinions passing between us in an effortless, redolent exchange.

  Of my work, she knows of Robert B. Robertson III and of the particular academic intolerance that has lead to my unemployment. She knows nothing of missing children and criminal investigations. She has not inquired further into the vandalism of my car.

  Of my family, she knows my brother has Down Syndrome and that my sister is a bona fide movie star. To her great credit, Caitlin received the news in each case with a polite, unexcited interest that would have been just as appropriate were Ben suffering from a nasty cold and had Tilly been employed as a dental hygienist.

  I wave placidly at the guy next to me, craning his head in my direction with an exaggerated what the fuck expression on his face. He is protesting my new, relaxed we-get-there-when-we-get-there freeway ethic. I smile. He flips me off and speeds away. Behind him is a gleaming Trooper cruiser, which inches up along side. A hard-looking uniformed woman looks over. If she has two eyebrows, it is not apparent. It could just be the way she scowls or the gleam on her window. Her bicep is larger than my waist.

  Three weeks ago, I might have lost bowel control. But I am not the least concerned any more about the police. The confidence of innocence has finally found me and taken root. I have done nothing to fear the police. I have finally shaken free of the paranoia that I am being followed. Just to prove the point to myself, I now seek out police cars whenever I am on the road. I maneuver next to them and nod. I maneuver ahead of them and gradually let my speed wane, forcing them to use another lane.

  This time I just smile and give a brief wave because I am in a relaxed, groovy, waving sort of mood. I’m tossing casual waves and the occasional hang-loose out along the freeway like candy on Halloween.

  The Trooper smiles back and waves politely. She accelerates smoothly ahead of me. There, I ask telepathically, isn’t that better than scowling? She doesn’t answer.

  I think back over the last two hours at the lake, stretched out over the front seat, getting stoned, thinking about things, marveling at the ducks and generally feeling better about my life. I know unemployment will eventually drive me bat shit, but, for the time being, I like the absence of immediate purpose. Contemplation and self-examination is purpose enough. Open-ended leisure time has made me both more impulsive and more relaxed. I act now – do things, go places – for no other reason than that it occurs to me to do so. Examples do not get any better than spending two hours at Lake Moreland contemplating the adaptability of common waterfowl.

  …of Ohio a few weeks ago and it was a marvelous time and I spoke to Ohioans … is that what we call them? Ohioans? Is that right? Yeah, see, I’m no dummy. Andrea, my producer behind the glass there with the look on her face thinks I fell off the back of a turnip truck but I know a thing or two. Anyway, I spoke to Ohioans at a couple of different venues in their fair state and I found them very hospitable and gracious and I thank them for their kindness. And I tell you this about Ohioans. They love their country. Okay? These people love their country. I did not talk to a single Ohioan who was ashamed to be an American. I didn’t meet a single person who would rather live in France than in Ohio. No one over there prefers the Arno to the great Ohio River. Okay? You understand what I’m sayin’? I can’t say that about all of the states I visited on this book tour …

  The new paint job has not, apparently, fixed my radio problem.

  Columbus looms in the late afternoon and the traffic thickens. I am surrounded by people who go to work everyday and have responsibilities. I leave the freeway, making my way towards the gleaming Donner-Kay Towers where the employees of Chaney, Baker, Smith & Lyons collect their paychecks.

  It has been almost a month without seeing Mae, although I am not particularly concerned. I am off the hook for the debacle of Tilly’s party, or so I have surmised from a two-hour telephone conversation in which Mae had finally begun to laugh at the absurdity of it all. Not that she is in any hurry to return to the home of my parents or come within a hundred yards of Ben. At least she has stopped obsessing over the unsightliness of her bruise which, if she is to be believed, covers roughly three-quarters of her head and is applying for its own social security number.

  Our conversations on the telephone are frequent and warm. We are rebuilding infrastructure. We are laying foundation and pouring concrete. It is a slow, and incremental process of re-solidifying trust through dialogue; of demonstrating affection and respect through listening and empathetic commiseration. We speak little of my circumstances. We talk a lot about what assholes various other guys in her life can be – including, delightfully, Rob Lyons who continues to pressure her to transfer with him to the branch office he is opening in Cleveland. Mae’s mounting intolerance for my old nemesis makes me feel strangely secure and I show none of my old resistance at the sound of his name.

  Mae is in the thick of preparing for trial. Something about pension rights in a merger gone bad. The Case, she calls it. She is consumed. She is so busy it seems like she is employed enough for both of us and, in just the right light, her over-employment makes me feel just a little better about being out of work. She lavishes me with the details of her insanely hectic days, laying her legal voodoo language on thick. She assures me that she will drop by when the case wraps up and her workload subsides.

  But I am not waiting. Lakeside Revelation No. 1: do not wait for all the good stuff at the bottom of the lake to come up to you; get off your tail feathers and go down and get it. Stick your head in the water and dive; get your bill down through the weeds and the sticks, right down into the fuckin’ muck. Contrary to popular belief, nothing good ever comes to those who wait.

  Nor will I any longer be cowed by the self-destructive thought that Mae is slumming in my company. I am as worthy as any lawyer or doctor or stockbroker. Lakeside Revelation No. 2: I am as deserving of the lake bottom muck as anyone else. Corollary A to Lakeside Revelation No. 2: everyone has tail feathers, and if others get in the way of your lake muck, those tail feathers are yours for the plucking.

  I circle the Donner-Kay Towers. Once, twice, three times. I widen my perimeter, ignoring two parking garages in hopes of something I can get for a couple of quarters. The closest spot I can find is three blocks away. I park and climb out and stretch as though I am just getting out of bed after a long night’s sleep.

  I do my best to arrange my hair and clothes in
the reflection of the windows of my new – newish – silver Civic. I look closely at my face. Damn. Among the many changes wrought by unemployment, shaving has relinquished its claim to a place in my daily routine. Mae likes a clean shave. And cologne. I forgot cologne. Damn it. Had I known when I headed out for Lake Moreland that I would be taking Mae out for dinner in the city, I would have shaved. And cologned. Damn it. Spontaneity, which was at the very heart of Lakeside Revelation No. 3, has a clear downside.

  I fuss with my hair some more and look around, considering my options for an impromptu shave. There are none.

  I double check the car door and head off to find Mae. I half expect that I will not be able to find her or that she will be unavailable for some reason. I should have made sure she is free. I should have confirmed that The Case could do without her for an hour. I almost called her from the lake. I even dialed the number and listened to the receptionist intone the names of dead lawyers. But the sound of those names conjured the image not of long-legged, mocha colored, silky Mae Chang, but of seam-splitting, big-haired, foul-mouthed Glenda Laveau. My half-baked brain flooded with thoughts of the unpleasantness that was supposed to no longer bother me, and of the legal representation that I could not afford. The aversive impulse had been enough to end the call and to simultaneously introduce the idea of surprising Mae with dinner.

  I reach Mae’s office building amid the full crush of Columbus’ rush hour decampment. The sidewalks are full of people and the street is a frenzy of metal. I catch a full-body glimpse of myself in one of the large smoky-glass double doors that line the front of the south tower. I look like hell. I remind myself that my buzz is wearing off, but I still think this is an accurate and objective assessment of how I look. I briefly consider calling the whole thing off; maybe just walking two blocks over to Buckeye Hawk’s and having a burger and a beer and going home. Maybe going over to check in on Ben to see how dad is faring while mom is holed up in a health spa fomenting a lesbian-powered rebellion against the war. I did promise, after all.