Unraveling

by Owen Thomas

  And they would have, each of them, done anything for her. For Susan. They would have followed her anywhere. The adulation was never overt. Probably not even conscious in most of them. But Susan was the one who held them all together. At some level, they all knew that. They followed her. Protected her. Like a leader.

  Certainly none of them had trusted the intentions of Hollis the interloper; the muscle bound swim-jock from UNOH. One of the Fighting Dogstars from Lima. They did not want to trust him. They were protective and Hollis was an outsider. He had the stink of establishment and was never quick enough to denounce the war or Dick Nixon. He drank beer. He liked highballs. He didn’t smoke. Ever. He did not get high. Ever. He did not like rallies. He was not one of them.

  But the Aquarian resistance to Hollis had always been far more personal than it was political or cultural. His very presence represented the on-going threat to take from them, from each of them, something precious. They wanted Susan for themselves; even the women had wanted her. Just as he had. It wasn’t a sexual thing. Not just sexual anyway, for sex had always been in the air to some extent. Susan had been a source of something ineffable that others wanted to be near. A clarity of presence. A way about her. She had had a way of making others feel purposeful about their own lives. Resolute. Like they could do anything. Be anyone. They were all going to stop evil and change the world. They were the ones in the song; the ones who were going to let the sun shine in. And Susan, it seemed to Hollis, had been the sun. For all of them. For each of them.

  So, in the early days, before Susan had made up her own mind about him, the Aquarians had never left him alone with his future wife. They had all gone out together, leaving campus in a mob. And then they had always come back to campus together. They had all followed Susan around these very grounds and up this very hill to the foot of Taylor Hall. They had all sat among the trees watching the moon. Susan was the most egalitarian soul to ever have her own entourage. She pretended that she was just one of the group, but she was the only one who ever actually believed that. She was always in the lead and they had always followed. And, whenever he could make it over to the Kent State campus, Hollis had followed them following her, like a big baby goose that had taken up with a family of ducks.

  Someone always wanted to talk politics. Tricky Dick was always the conversational piñata. Someone always wanted to talk race. And class. And war. Someone always had a guitar. Hollis was surprised that Simon and Garfunkel did not eventually show up in person and confiscate the guitar. Someone always wanted to sing. Susan always wanted to dance. She danced with everyone, even the girls, sometimes in two’s and three’s. Like willows in the breeze. She danced with everyone.

  Everyone except him.

  She had sure tried enough. But Hollis had always abstained. And somehow, inexplicably, that had ended up weighing in his favor. It had made him stand out. He wasn’t a toker and he wasn’t a dancer. He wasn’t a singer.

  But he had been patient. He had always been right there waiting. Not crowding her. Not pressing her for attention. Unlike the others. No fawning. Even though it was clearly the prospect of seeing Susan that had kept bringing him back to Kent week after week. It was her, Susan Kimball, that he came to see. It was Susan for whom he waited outside Engleman Hall. Susan for whom any number of the Aquarians had gone in dutiful search whenever he showed up unexpected.

  He had presented himself to her, but never dove fully into her world. He had indulged her culture. Her friends. Her politics. He made every effort to be with her on whatever terms she saw fit, including sharing her with the Aquarians. This was certainly not out of any respect for the Aquarians, but out respect for Susan. No, not even that. Out of fear. Fear that if he asserted himself, if he declared his intentions, she would startle and leave, swimming away from the sudden shadow on the water. Fear that if he ever forced her to choose, she would not choose him.

  He hung back. Wanting nothing greater than to be entwined, conjoined, invited inside forever, he hung back. He tempered his desire with a disciplined reserve that kept him, from the Aquarian perspective, a little aloof. Thinking. Observing. Coming to unknown conclusions and judgments. About them? About her? About politics and life and war and the military-industrial complex? Who knew? When he sat, back to a tree, just outside the firelight, swirling his beer in its bottle, as they all carried on, what the hell was he thinking? No one but Hollis knew. But it was something. He was full of something, this Hollis Johns, this slab of muscle from UNOH who had his eyes on Susan, their leader, their sun, but who never made the move they were all expecting.

  Inside, he had been a desperate, smoldering, quavering mass of insecurity. But outside, Hollis had been a deep, still lake. The picture of calm. As if to say to her, to Susan, night after night, moon after moon, that there was no hurry. That he would be right there leaning up against a tree when she wanted to take the next step; whenever she was ready to try something else.

  And maybe, he supposed, now, nearly forty years later, Susan had been intrigued with the sprout of the idea that she might be someone completely different than who she was and who she was becoming. It was a perfectly ridiculous notion that he was the one – Hollis Johns from the UNOH Fighting Dogstars – out of all of the Aquarians singing and dancing and screwing and smoking refer and carrying on, it was big-shouldered, good-natured, quiet as a tree stump Hollis, who held for her this possibility of radical transformation. He was wrong for her. His very presence was a kind of dare. And somehow that had made him perfect.

  Hollis had won. Not by outlasting the others. They adored and followed Susan to the end. That never changed. But it turned out that she was drawn to what she did not know or understand. Hollis. The man apart. The same rebel instinct that, with a little freedom and distance from her church-going parents, had sent her plunging headlong into the protest movement, suddenly sent her after the next unthinkable. The next shiny, glinting, flash of liquid metal sunlight skittering through the water. What the hell was this? This guy. This unexcitable, mountain-chested man with the quiet eyes who keeps showing up and following and watching and not dancing or smoking. Just what the hell was this? For a long time, he suspected, she had wanted to follow. Wanted to know more. Wanted to do the one thing that everyone around her counseled against.

  And then, finally, she had followed him. She had reached out, first in little ways – looks, words, laughs, inside jokes – and he was always right there for her. The Aquarians had watched warily as the thing they had each subconsciously feared, began to develop. Each night, each weekend, the relationship grew and she followed him just a little further from the sounds of Simon and Garfunkel and the smell of Mary Jane and burning wood.

  And then, suddenly, as if it had always been so, they were a couple, each identified by his or her exclusive affection for the other and its reciprocity.

  The Aquarians had gradually accepted this hard fact and then, reluctantly, they had accepted him. They had little choice. The shoe was on the other foot. For to not accept Hollis, to reject Susan’s choice of association, for whatever betrayal it may have seemed, was to risk the unkind judgment of not seeing the world as she saw the world.

  Of course, whenever they quarreled and broke the courtship routine, the Aquarians would rally and surround Susan and vilify Hollis and carry on much as before, without him in the background watching and waiting, as though they had all passed some sort of insidious test of their collective resolve. Words like co-opt and seduction and brainwash came spinning back into vogue during these interludes with all of their political import purposefully misdirected at the new piñata; the Dick Nixon stand-in. At least, that is how Hollis had come to imagine the evenings at Kent State in his absence.

  But the break-ups had always proven transitory. They had always managed to find their way back to each other. Purely for her sake, the Aquarians had had to accept Hollis as a permanent fixture in Susan’s life – or at least her college life since few of them would ever have anticipated a lasting marriage
. They learned that whenever the romance faltered, they needed to exercise some measure of restraint in taking their piñata swats, or declaring their own affection for her, because the hiatus was always temporary. He would be back. And, with inexplicable devotion, she would love him again.

  Hollis crossed the lawn to the base of the hill. The grass beneath him came in worn out patches of green and brown. The ground had that beaten, trampled look that is the signature of outdoor rallies. He aimed for a man stuffing papers into a cardboard box on a folding metal table.

  “Good evening,” Hollis said casually. The man looked up, startled.

  “Evening,” he said. He had a short beard and a balding head and big hands.

  “You know where the … the ralliers went? The protesters?”

  “You kinda of missed ‘em.” He went back to stuffing things in the box. “They were only here for two days. Only, I say. An eternity. They wrapped up this afternoon.”

  “Do you know where they are tonight?”

  He stopped again, now giving Hollis his full, albeit confused attention. He scratched his head. “Who? The protesters?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What? You mean like all eight thousand of them? Home I would guess. Tomorrow’s a work day.”

  “No. Sorry. I mean the organizers. Not the… I mean the organizers of the rally.”

  “Oh. No. Cincinnati maybe? I don’t know. I work for the school. I’m just cleaning up after their yippie asses.”

  Hollis must have looked confused.

  “Never seen so many SUV’s and baby strollers in my life. I don’t really care where they go as long as they’re not here.”

  The man retrained his attention to the box on the table. Hollis thanked him and strolled up the hill. Halfway up he turned and stepped backwards, watching the man with the box collapse the table and then head off across the commons.

  Hollis laughed to himself. Susan was no doubt back at home. He should have just gone directly from the airport back to the house.

  But he didn’t want to go to the house. He didn’t want to find her at the house. The house had become a battleground. It was territory that had to be fought for or surrendered. Marital conflict had scarred the meadow with bunkers and trenches. Her kitchen. His den. Her laundry room. His garage. The bed: his side and her side. The bathroom: his turn and her turn. The stupid battle to control the bedroom window. Seizing hours of the day, morning meditation, midnight meanders, advancing and retreating in a dance with the enemy. Home made everything more complicated. Too much history. Too many unbreakable patterns. He wanted to start over. He wanted to find her and talk to her someplace else. Neutral ground. Hallowed ground. Here.

  What he intended, what he would actually say to her, was still a mystery to him. He had no idea what he would say. He had been trying to translate the beating in his chest from the moment he had seen her face on the television, pointing at him, shouting, It is your turn to admit you have been wrong. I will not apologize to you or for you. It is your turn to apologize. To explain yourself. It is your turn to show your loyalty. His heart was still beating out an answer. In the twenty-three hundred mile bank-shot from Blythe to Los Angeles to Columbus to Kent, his heart had pounded out such a long and tortured response that he felt like his ribs might pulverize into little piles of bone dust. And yet, for so much cardiac dictation, there were only five words he had been able to transcribe: I’m. Sorry. Don’t. Leave. Me.

  At the top of the hill, Hollis sat down on the grass and looked at the empty commons beneath him. The moonless sky had left the stars to do their distant shivering. He was as lonely now as he could ever remember feeling. Even at his age, he was still breaking new emotional ground. He marveled at how terrible and wonderful it felt to be alive and in love. Again, that beautiful ache. A gift. And Susan had said it best.

  …What you sacrifice when you love anything or anyone – a person, a country, a principle – what you sacrifice when you love, is the luxury of not caring…

  He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, wondering if he should just stop the nonsense and call her. Calling her from his cell phone was, at long last, technologically possible. In the last of the many hours he had spent pacing the concourses at LAX, he had found an over-priced travel gadget store that sold a charger compatible with his phone. He had speed-walked his way back to his gate, ripping into the packaging as he went, plugging in to the first outlet he found. He might easily have used a payphone, but they had all seemed to be either in use, or sandwiched between other phones that were in use, or situated near clusters of camped out travelers, and he was squeamish about not being able to tell Susan whatever it was he was going to tell her because others might hear and know what kind of husband he had been.

  Even as the phone had flickered to life with the first current, he had dialed Susan’s cell number. But with his thumb poised above the send button, he foundered over the impossibility of language. I’m. Sorry. Don’t. Leave. Me. There was so much more than that. How does one begin that conversation? A sixth word came like a drop of sap from a tree in winter: Please.

  He had watched the charging animation on the little screen – dashes that form a box around the picture of a battery – trying to find the words in his head. He kept seeing her face on the television. His wife. Susan. An electronic visage that had surpassed in raw emotional impact the electronic visage of his daughter on a different television, in a different hotel room, in a different city. He had not thought anything could surpass the impact of seeing Tilly. Indeed, he was pretty sure he had almost had a heart attack.

  But he needed wait just over twenty-four hours and, whammo, there was his wife. Susan. Like she was twenty-two years old, taking on the President of the United States and cutting through forty years of marriage like it was wet tissue, all in a single look. That was two electronic revelations in as many days. For a man who had for so long held most of the cinematic arts, big and small, in such disdain, recent events had nearly convinced him that God Almighty watches television; only from the inside looking out. He finds us when we turn on the idiot box and start changing the channel. Church attendance is down. Cable subscriptions are up. Our electronic window to the world is God’s window into that observation room, that temporary holding cell, we call life. The television is but a cosmic two-way mirror and God, whoever or whatever that word suggests, is on the other side, looking in, listening, holding a paper cup of bad coffee, and trying to decide if our story, our parade of excuses, holds together.

  Eventually, the other animation on his cell phone – this one simply a flashing number 4 – had caught his attention. Three messages had landed while his phone had been in a coma. As fellow travelers had navigated around him pulling their rolling black bags, he had cancelled the call to Susan and checked his messages.

  The first message had been from Susan. Short and efficient with a tinge of worry. Hollis? Where are you? I hope everything is okay. No one answers at the house. Just checking in on Ben. I’m fine. You can call me if you want but I may not be able to take it so leave a message. I’ll call you later. Her voice was like a salve. It was like rock solid ground after a month at sea. He had listened to the message three times.

  The second message had been from David, providing the address and telephone number for Tilly he had requested from his hotel room in Blythe, along with assurances regarding Ben. It was a rambling, scattered, pseudo-conversational message that spanned a tour of much of the house as David looked for Tilly’s contact information. He sounded tense, distracted. Like he was trying too hard not to sound tense and distracted. The messaged had ended with the words love you, dad; an unusual closing for David that had seemed to Hollis almost as melancholic as it was awkward. Something was not right. He cued the third message and the sound of Susan had once again filled his head.

  Hollis? Where are you? I just spoke with David. I don’t even know what to say. He said you’re in Phoenix. Phoenix? Some sort of criminal thing? I have no idea why you are in Phoenix
, if that is where you really are… but listen... Something is wrong with David, Hollis. He won’t open up about it, but I know something is wrong. I’m concerned that you have just left him to deal with Ben on his own. He wouldn’t have told you no, even if it was a bad time. You know how he is. He said everything was okay. I wish you were there just the same. One of us should be there. For Ben. And to find out what’s going on with David. I just… he said it sounded like you had some kind of emergency… so, I don’t know. I hope everything is okay. I’ll try to be home tomorrow.

  He had listened to the message twice, mining it for information buried in her tone, taking solace from her expression of concern for her family, owning her suspicion and disappointment in him for leaving as he had, wishing she had been less civil with him, wishing she had been there to lash out at him in person even if only to show her that he agreed, to show her that she was right, that he had gone off, leaving his home, for the worst of reasons. Answering a booty call from Bethany Koan. Lynnette Moss.

  I’m. Sorry. Don’t. Leave. Me.

  He had started to listen a third time, when they began calling his flight and it became impossible for him to hear. He had turned off the phone and boarded the plane, tightly wrapping his exhaustion-fed desperation in the resolve that the next time he heard Susan’s voice he would be holding her hand.

  Sitting at the top of the hill at the foot of Taylor Hall, Hollis opened his phone and listened again to David’s rambling message. He closed his eyes to catch the number. Then he quickly keyed in the numbers and set them free before he could change his mind.

  “Hello.”

  “Tilly?”

  “…”

  “Til?”

  “Dad? Is that… is everything okay? Is mom… Ben?”

  “No, no, Til. Everything’s fine. They’re all fine. I just wanted… I was in your area yesterday. L.A. I had some business for a friend. I was going to come by and see you. I kind of ran out of time. So…”