Nathan in Spite of Himself

by Bernie Silver

  “I don’t know.”

  Jane withdrew her hand and looked off in the distance.

  “At first I thought we should call it quits,” she said upon returning. “But I don’t want to do something I’ll later regret. Good men are hard to find, and believe me that’s more than a cliché. We’ve been going at it hot and heavy since fall, so what say we take a time-out, maybe think about the future. And I strongly suggest yours include AA.”

  It could have been worse. She might have said fuck you, get out of my life, I never want to see you again. And it could have been better. Much better.

  I left feeling like shit and needing a drink.

  Chapter 69

  Like proverbial clockwork, the same thing happened every November. In the waning days of autumn, I yearned for summer. This longing did not occur in September, after summer officially ended, nor in October, when fall was well under way. Early autumn still boasted summery days, and trick-or-treaters sometimes went jacketless on Halloween. But come November things turned to shit, meaning to snow and cold, and I looked back fondly on the summer inferno.

  Such nostalgia overwhelmed me as I sat at my desk on a Wednesday afternoon, gazing out the window at the nasty, unrelenting crap coming down. I was well aware that many people saw beauty in a snow-covered landscape, but I pictured its picaresque consequences: the clogged streets and slippery sidewalks leading to snarled traffic and pedestrian pratfalls, plus all the work snow entailed, like the brushing, sweeping and shoveling of everything from porches to sidewalks to driveways to vehicles. All before the workday got under way.

  I turned from the hideous sight outside to observe true beauty strolling through the door. Ellen Drury still looked good to me even though, besides not being bed partners, we weren’t exactly friends either, as she’d hoped we’d be. Instead we were cordial colleagues, which was okay with me.

  The fashionably short skirts she wore these days were also okay with me. On this particular day Ellen’s long woolen stockings mitigated the garment’s allure, but she more than compensated by letting the skirt seek its own level as she sat down. A dutiful tug proved futile, which also suited me fine.

  Still, I tried to focus on her face, her cheeks in particular, which at the moment were cherry pink and apple blossom red.

  “I’m so excited,” she said. “I just had to talk to someone.”

  This presented a problem, as a great deal of work lay ahead of me and I had little time to listen to anyone talk about anything, no matter what they were wearing.

  “I’m kind of pressed for time,” I said. “Why not chat with Rachel about this, whatever it is?”

  Ellen waved a dismissive hand. “She’s the last person on Earth I’d discuss this with.”

  The topic must be politics or religion, since the two could yak about almost anything else without crossing swords. But even if I had the time, politics or religion was the last thing I’d want to rap about, especially in my current emotional state.

  Things were not going well between Jane Bartolo and me. In fact, they weren’t going at all. I’d tried several times to arrange a get-together, for coffee if nothing else, but she’d been indifferent to the idea, even more so after discovering I’d been indifferent to AA, having failed to attend a single meeting. After a brittle conversation last month, I realized I might have lost Jane forever, and so distraught was I at this prospect that my work suffered. No one at the paper seemed to notice but I felt bad about it, along with everything else I felt bad about.

  “So whaduhyuh think?” Ellen asked.

  “About what?”

  “The election.”

  “What election?”

  “California’s.”

  “What about it?”

  “Ronald Reagan.”

  “What about him?”

  At this point I was pulling Ellen’s chain, even though by doing so I was prolonging an unwanted conversation. That’s how lousy I felt.

  “You’re pathetic, you know that?” she said, her eyes sparking. “The most important political event of the year, the election of Ronald Reagan as governor of California, and you’re clueless. The man may be president someday, and if he is, you’ll be ignorant of that too. What year is it, Nate? What month? What day of the week? Do you even know?”

  Maybe teasing her wasn’t such a good idea.

  “Ellen, calm down, I’m just kidding. Congratulations on the Gipper’s victory.”

  The fire in her eyes slowly died out. “I’m sorry. As you’re probably aware, I sometimes slip into my old ways. I try not to, but I guess God is God and I’m only human.”

  She shrugged, apparently resigned to her lowly status, and I thought that was that. But unfortunately it wasn’t.

  “It’s just … I still don’t get it,” she said. “You cover politics for us, and yet you’re not interested in the subject.”

  “I’m not interested in politics because I hate it. I’ve already told you that. ”

  She grimaced and posed the inevitable question. “Then why’re you covering it for the Gazette?”

  True, I’d anticipated the query, but that doesn’t mean I’d prepared for it. And since I hadn’t, I improvised.

  “I’m covering Dearborn Heights, and politics happens to be part of that assignment. Overall, I like the work.”

  I’d devised worse rationales for doing something I couldn’t entirely explain.

  Ellen gazed out the window a moment, then turned back. “Why do you hate politics so much?”

  Now that pitch I could hit.

  “What’s not to hate? It’s full of snake-oil salesmen who peddle fake cures for voters’ problems in order to get elected, and then lie about why their remedies didn’t work in order to get reelected. The funny thing is, people know politicians are charlatans, which is why when they call someone a politician they don’t mean it as a compliment. And yet they keep buying those worthless elixirs. Which is even funnier.”

  I advised her to think about that.

  Ellen glanced out the window again, maybe to think about that. Meanwhile, my eyes drifted to her legs, the lovely shape of which the stockings couldn’t hide. She turned back and I yanked my eyes away, hoping she hadn’t noticed my indiscretion. If she had, she gave no indication.

  “So let me get this straight,” Ellen said. “You don’t believe in religion, which gives people their values. And you don’t believe in politics, which helps people live together in relative peace. And you don’t believe in … what? Surely there must be something else you don’t believe in that the rest of us do.”

  True enough, but one disbelief at a time, please.

  “How can you believe in politics?” I asked. “Because it helps people live together in peace? Bull. It divides people into warring factions. As for politicians, look at the pain and suffering they cause. How can you defend Richard Tubbin?”

  “I don’t defend him, “ Ellen said, “just like I don’t defend a lot of politicians. But I do defend politics. It’s like air. Not always clean, but necessary for survival.”

  On that note, she got up. “Look, I didn’t come here to argue with you. I just wanted to tell someone how thrilled I was about Reagan’s election, and I couldn’t talk to Rachel about it, though even she has no use for LBJ these days, mainly because of the war. Of course, she still admires his Marxist garbage, like the so-called Great Society. Reagan, on the other hand …” Instead of finishing, she said, “Think about it. Not about what else you hate, but about what you believe in. We all need something, you know.”

  Ellen started for the door, then pivoted. “One other thing.”

  What now, for chrissake?

  “Don’t believe in alcohol, Nate. It’s a false god.”

  Where the hell did that come from? Was the whole world witness to my drinking?

  “Goddamnit—”

  “Don’t deny it. And don’t think most of us aren’t aware of it.”

  After Ellen left I had to concede she was right. I did belie
ve in booze. But I couldn’t buy the false-god thing. At least you could see, touch, taste and smell alcohol, and if you drank enough of it you could forget how screwed up you were. That kind of deity I respected.

  I finished the Heights section at dawn’s early light, then went home and had a beer for breakfast.

  Chapter 70

  A week after Ellen Drury called me a worthless drunk, or words to that effect, Rachel Solomon did the same, only with more flourishes, and, worst of all, she bushwhacked me.

  We were having our usual end-of-week lunch at Giselle’s, and she warmed up by unloading on Lyndon Johnson, Ronald Reagan and especially Richard Nixon, whom many Republicans were urging to run for president again in two years. She went on to speculate that with the civil rights movement taking hold in the South, maybe it would spread to the North, in which case Richard Tubbin might finally get his heinie kicked (and yes, those were her words).

  I found all this mildly interesting, but then came the ambush. With no warning whatsoever, not even a hint of things to come, she said, “Let’s talk about your drinking.”

  I almost spritzed my coffee. Then, at a slight disadvantage, I resorted to the stalest of comebacks. “Let’s not and say we did.”

  “Okay, be flippant,” Rachel said, “see if I care.” She may not have cared for my flippancy but she wasn’t about to drop the subject. “Believe it or not,” she said, “I’ve mellowed out about drinking. My husband likes his beer and wine, so I’ve learned to live with alcohol around. And I’ve tried to cut you some slack too. When I’ve smelled booze on your breath or seen those road-map eyes, I haven’t said a word. But, I can no longer keep quiet on the subject. Your drinking is even affecting your work. You miss stories, your columns often ramble and your layouts … let’s just say they’re sometimes confusing. Plus your clothes don’t match.”

  Well burn me at the stake and stomp on my ashes.

  “Sorry, my attempt at humor,” Rachel said. “I’m still not very good at it.”

  Or I wasn’t very good at recognizing it. Either way, I realized that even while letting me have it, and even with her hair slightly frazzled, her face devoid of makeup and her figure camouflaged by a loose wool sweater and full-length skirt—even with all of that, Rachel looked lovelier than ever.

  “You ever considered going to AA?” she asked.

  Now she looked frumpy.

  What was it with women and AA? Jane had suggested it, Rachel was doing the same and Ellen surely would have if we’d talked long enough.

  Well, to hell with them.

  Maybe I did need to do something about my drinking, seeing as everyone seemed to think so, but AA would not be that thing. I’d talked to a few members whom I happened to know and they’d gone on about, among other things, how they’d learned to let go and let God.

  Christ.

  “No,” I said, “I’ve never considered going to AA, although others have considered it for me. Hey, can we talk about something else?”

  “Sure,” Rachel said agreeably. “And after that you can keep flushing your life down the toilet.”

  I let her have the last word to avoid saying something I might regret later. She resumed eating her chef’s salad while I worked on my ham sandwich just to keep busy. Meanwhile, I thought about what Rachel had said.

  Who even noticed the layouts?

  Chapter 71

  Dad stood at the kitchen table carving a modest-sized turkey and going on about death and dying while his captive audience, namely Mom and I, sat there suffering in silence. I don’t know why he picked Thanksgiving to discourse on the subject, unless the dead bird had inspired him. Or maybe he was following a favorite pastime of many older people, good any time of the year. Most of my elderly relatives, as well as most of my family’s friends and their elderly relatives, loved to chatter about the dearly departed, especially around the dinner table, where conversations often began with, “Guess who died?” Tonight Dad named several of the recently deceased before we could even speculate: Montgomery Clift, Lenny Bruce, Gertrude Berg, Eric Fleming and Clifton Webb.

  Of course, Mom and I were already aware these celebrities were no longer with us, and I’m sure my dad knew we knew, but that was beside his point, which he got to while contending with a stubborn thighbone.

  “So let that be a lesson to you,” he advised. “Live life now, because you never know. Monty, such a tragedy, was only 45. Lenny, oi, what a mouth, was 39. Fleming, a better actor than that Eastwood fellow your mother’s all aflutter over, he was only 41.”

  Mom opened her mouth as if to protest, but quickly closed it, either because she knew it was no use arguing with him, or because she knew he was right. She had a crush on Rowdy Yates.

  “So you see,” Dad continued, his voice reflecting his epic struggle, “we, all of us, could go at any moment. You think you’ll live forever, especially at your age”—he looked pointedly at me—“but you won’t. None of us will.”

  He paused after separating the thighbone from the hipbone and moved on to another body part, though I suspected more happy news was on the way. He proved me right while cutting off a breast, which may have triggered his next cheerful topic.

  “That day in July,” he said, “when those eight student nurses in Chicago woke up in the morning, did they realize they’d all be gone … kaput … by day’s end, stabbed to death by a lunatic? Speck, I think was his name. I ask you, did they?”

  Neither my Mom nor I took the bait, which of course failed to slow him down, let alone stop him.

  “And then the next month, did those fourteen people at the University of Texas, most of them young students, when they began that day did they think some meshugener would shoot them all … dead yet … later on? His name I remember, because it was the same as the poet, Whitman, plus it sounded Jewish. Anyway, you see what I’m saying? You just never know.”

  Finished dismembering the carcass, Dad transferred the sliced torso and severed limbs to a copper platter, which he placed in the middle of the table, where it joined bowls of yams, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, green beans and stuffing. I felt stuffed just looking at all that food, maybe because what I wanted most was the schnapps Dad traditionally served after holiday dinners.

  He returned the cutting board to the kitchen counter and seated himself at the table, seemingly at peace with his God, this earth and the expired fowl.

  Mom looked a little pale, maybe because she’d had her fill of death and dying for the evening. She placed a hand on Dad’s forearm.

  “Al?”

  “Yes, my love.”

  “Could you, for the rest of this meal, maybe not be so gloomy?”

  He gave her one of his looks that conveyed hurt and innocence at the same time. “I was simply saying that—”

  “We know what you were saying. But please, say no more. Not on that subject, anyway.”

  He exchanged the hybrid look for a sly one. “This is Thanksgiving, right?”

  “Yes, it’s Thanksgiving, but—”

  “And on Thanksgiving we thank God for our blessings, correct?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Well, I’m merely suggesting that we thank God for the greatest blessing of all, to be alive and well on this day despite being surrounded by death. And I haven’t even mentioned Vietnam—”

  “Please, Al. Let’s just enjoy the turkey you’ve carved up so beautifully.”

  The flattery worked, as she knew it would. My dad grew quiet, then they both gobbled up their food while I nibbled on mine.

  “Oi, I’m stuffed,” Mom announced after cleaning her plate.

  I couldn’t remember the last time she’d said that. Maybe on a previous Thanksgiving.

  She massaged her stomach. “Let’s wait a few minutes before dessert.”

  Mom served coffee and Dad got out his Luckys, so I had reason to hope the pontificating was over. Smoking and drinking coffee were for contemplation, not oration. But hope quickly vanished as my dad glared at the cigarette
package, presumably at the warning label introduced earlier this year.

  “Do those schlemiels in Washington think we don’t know this?” he asked rhetorically. “We know cigarettes aren’t good for us, but we don’t care. Kishkeh, kugel, corned beef, pastrami, pie, ice cream … they’re also hazardous to our health. But they give us pleasure, a concept that’s apparently foreign to those people in D.C. Sooner or later we’ll all be dead, and, as I said, maybe sooner than we think. So why not enjoy ourselves while we can?”

  Mom darted through the narrow opening. “Speaking of pie, I believe it’s time for dessert.”

  She went to fetch it, and Dad enjoyed a Lucky while he could, perhaps contemplating a hazardous slice of pumpkin pie. I bummed a cigarette and awaited the schnapps. Eventually it came, and I had one, two, maybe four glasses, after which I didn’t give a shit if I died today, tomorrow or never.

  For the time being, life was good.

  Chapter 72

  Writers usually avoid clichés, or at least try to, but what better way to synopsize the pervasive interest in my drinking than with, When it rains, it pours? Phil Doppler was next to express concern, thus breaking the female monopoly. He called me at home the first week in December, on a Sunday no less, to ask that I meet with him the following morning, an hour before the workday officially began. Sounding more funereal than a funeral director, he said he wanted to discuss, and I quote, something of importance.

  What the hell did that mean? “Something of importance” could refer to almost anything, from the paltry to the profound, since one man’s petty was another man’s important. And something of importance to whom? Doppler? The Gazette? All of mankind? Me?

  By not specifying the meeting’s purpose, the schmuck forced me to conjecture the rest of the day. He seldom called me into his office except to question a story, but the next production cycle had barely begun so it couldn’t be that. Maybe he was upset about my uncoordinated attire. Rachel had joked about it but clotheshorse Doppler might take a mismatch seriously.