Rear-View Mirrors

by Paul Fleischman

  “What’s the drinking age in New Hampshire?”

  “No idea.”

  “My age exactly.”

  We greeted my father, still frantically swinging his ax like a wood-splitting John Henry. He’d brought out his radio and tuned in the Red Sox, which din we escaped by walking around to the front of the house and sitting on the porch, each with a Bluebird ale from the fridge.

  “Smells like pea soup in the kitchen,” said Leo.

  He stretched his long legs and slowly propelled himself back and forth in his rocking chair.

  “You know my father. He seems to think that pea soup is one of the four basic food groups.” Having tasted beer only once before, I sipped cautiously from my bottle. Then I squinted, discreetly I hoped, and swallowed. “Something the body needs every day.” I took a bigger sip, doubting I’d ever feel that way about Bluebird ale.

  “Probably tied to his being a writer.”

  I scooted my chair toward Leo. “Why is that?”

  “A lot of the greats in the arts lived on diets heavy in legumes,” he declared.

  I took another pull from my bottle, hoping that that might clarify matters.

  “Tolstoy was a big pea-soup man. And then there was Schubert, dead at age thirty-one of an overdose of lentils. They say that near the end he’d trade away a song, a quartet, even an entire symphony for a pocketful.”

  My stomach was empty. I could feel the ale going to my head. In spite of which, I strongly suspected that this son of historians was making up facts, as my father enjoyed doing.

  “Most scholars,” he went on, “think that there must be some special trace element in the beans.”

  “Vitamin Pea-Twelve?” I laughed at my own joke.

  Leo belched and excused himself. “Some have even suggested a link between flatulence and the creative process.”

  I spit out my mouthful of ale, watering a potted geranium in the process.

  “I’ve always been attracted to women who can hold their liquor, Olivia.”

  Upon hearing this, I spit out the swig I’d taken to replace the one I’d lost.

  “However, despite your low marks on this point, I find you a most attractive niece.”

  All at once, I felt I might start crying. I stared at my uncle, flooded with gratitude. Why hadn’t my father ever spoken those words?

  “You ought to come down to Boston for a spell. I could drive you around, show you the sights. Take you to hear some good classical music.”

  “I’d love to. That really sounds wonderful.” I took another sip from my bottle. “Though I have to admit that that kind of music makes me squirmy as a six-year-old.” My father liked playing classical records, usually pieces with lots of singing, the sort that filled the entire house—and that made me want to head for the door. “All I remember from the one time I went to a concert like that is people coughing.”

  Leo rocked contentedly. “You’ll find we have an extremely high quality of coughing down in Boston. Especially during the winter flu season.”

  I blew on my bottle, producing a breathy note, and assumed the connection between this act and the subject of music was clear. Leo blew two long steamship blasts in reply and I knew that our friendship was sealed.

  “You’ve also got a great-uncle in Boston.”

  I gaped in astonishment. “I do?”

  “Alexander Tomlinson Tate. He’s in a nursing home, but his mind’s still sharp as a needle. And his memory’s stuffed full of tales of the merchant marine, campaigning for Roosevelt, fighting in the Spanish Civil War . . .”

  My father. My uncle Leo. My great-uncle Alexander. And surely others. I suddenly had a sense of having come into a surprise inheritance of fascinating, unsuspected relatives, of being included in a wider family. A family I was pleased to find myself part of.

  I finished my ale, my mind agreeably hazy. “The Big Dipper,” I stated.

  Leo looked baffled, and I realized that this time the connection wasn’t clear.

  “I feel like I’ve gone from a solitary star to part of a constellation.” I elaborated.

  Leo smiled at me. “Benvenuta.”

  I stared back at him, as puzzled as he’d been. “Italian,” he explained. “For ‘welcome.’”

  6 / Jukebox

  Columbus traveled by water, searching for land; I’m doing the opposite. I recall from grade school that he spotted a floating branch and felt sure he was getting close. I pass a bait shop and feel the same. Then I round a bend, pedal up a rise, and behold the body of water I’ve been waiting for: Lake Kiskadee, the farthest point on my father’s loop. I’m sweaty and tired. And despite the fact I’ve been taking more rest and water stops lately, I’m eager to celebrate reaching the lake with a swim and a leisurely break from riding. Then I remind myself that, like Columbus, I still have to make it back home.

  I zip down a hill and pass through the little town of Fearnley, close to the shore. Keeping an eye out for a place to swim, I impulsively turn off the highway and onto a road running near the water. It’s the middle of the week and many of the summer places I ride by are empty. I pass one dubbed “Dun Rovin.” Then “Cabin in the Pines.” Then I notice a stretch without any houses. I halt, walk my bike through the trees, and come upon a tiny cove. The view from the right is cut off by boulders. Up the shore to the left there’s a cabin—windows shuttered and showing no signs of life. I climb down onto one of the ramplike slabs of granite rising out of the water. I unlace my shoes, then decide to take everything off, walk in to my waist, and dive.

  It’s late June but the water feels like February. I start doing the crawl, head away from the shore, and a few minutes later am comfortable, except for my scrapes, which sting a bit. I stop and tread water. The lake is vast—it would take me a week to swim across it. I spy a pair of sails in the distance, hear a few specks of sound from a beach, but can easily imagine I’m the only one here. It’s quiet. The water laps against my neck. I enjoy the feeling of it surrounding my naked skin, and realize that I’d never swum without clothes before. There’s something so different about it, and I sense that some part of me wanted to make this different from an everyday dip, to transform it into ritual. I think of baptism and of Mao’s yearly swim across the Yangtze River. Then I wonder if my father swam here as well. I view the flickering images of my limbs. Am I, without knowing it, reenacting part of his annual rite?

  My feet, dangling in the frigid water closer to the bottom, complain of the cold. Slowly, I make my way back to shore, clamber, dripping, onto my rock, and stretch out face-down in a patch of sun. I’m relaxed, cooled, utterly content. Then I hear the faint sound of a radio.

  My eyes flick open. The sound becomes louder. Hurriedly, I get into my clothes, stand up, and catch sight of a boy, about ten years old, walking toward me through the trees. In one hand he’s holding a fishing pole and a tackle box, in the other a radio. He notices me and veers to his left. I lie down again, watching him climb out onto a ledge overhanging the lake. He opens his box and baits his hook. He stands, and casts as far as he can. Then he sits down, gazing out at the water. I wonder what he’s listening to on the radio, lift my head, and discover he’s tuned to a baseball game. I make out the words “Boston Red Sox.” And all of a sudden my mind begins entertaining the notion that this boy is in truth none other than my father. That people don’t really die, but rather are assigned new lives different from their old ones, such that their families never recognize them. They become sugar-beet farmers in Idaho, or waitresses in Sydney, Australia. Or ten-year-old boys fishing on the shores of Lake Kiskadee, New Hampshire.

  His hair is blond, as what little remained on my father’s head was. His legs are long. I watch him kicking them back and forth and find myself wanting to talk with him. Amazed that I’m actually doing what I’m doing, I get to my feet, put my watch in the Raleigh’s basket, and walk over his way.

  I step onto a boulder lower than his and stare up at him. “Do you know the time?”

  He
looks at me and shakes his head. He’s too young for watches, I realize. I know I should leave, but I’m not ready to yet. I want to hear the sound of his voice.

  “Catching any fish?”

  He shakes his head again. I need a different type of question.

  “What kind of fish do they catch in this lake?’’

  “Bass,” he answers matter-of-factly. “Bullhead. Sunfish. Chubsuckers . . .”

  His voice is high and sweet—he could have stepped straight out of the Vienna Boys’ Choir. I wonder if my father’s was the same and study his face, searching for resemblances, trying to believe in my delusion.

  “Who’s winning the game?”

  “Boston.”

  His tone doesn’t disclose his loyalties. I’m about to ask if he’s a Red Sox fan—than it dawns on me that if he isn’t I’ll have to surrender my fantasy.

  “Good luck,” I say instead. I linger a moment and smile, but he isn’t looking—he’s intent on his line, waiting for a bite.

  I return to my bike, walk it to the road, and empty my canteen into my mouth. Watching for someplace I can refill it, I ride back to the highway and continue along the lake. The dent in my wheel is still scraping the brakes. My legs are reluctant to pedal. My back’s tired. I wonder how my father managed, then remember that he was a cyclist in college. Knowing he’d jeer at my griping, I determine to complete the ride without complaint, and am instantly rewarded for this vow by the appearance of Jack’s Lakeside Lounge.

  I park by the door, take out my canteen, squeeze the water out of my braid, and step into the darkness within. I halt and wait for my eyes to adjust. They rise toward the dimly lit chandelier hanging above the bar, then pick out the glow from the tip of a cigarette hovering in midair beneath it.

  “What can I do for you?” The cigarette moves.

  “I was wondering if you’d fill my canteen.” As if a fog is lifting in the room, I discern the shapes of two mountainous backs at the bar and a thick-necked man behind it.

  “What do you want in it—whiskey or gin?”

  One of the backs shakes with a chuckle, its owner turning to look me over.

  “Just water, thanks.” I hand over the canteen.

  “How do you like it—straight, or maybe thinned down a bit with a shot of vodka?”

  Another chuckle.

  “Straight will do fine.”

  I expect him to ask me what brand I want, but he fills the canteen at a tiny sink and gives it back without any more jokes.

  “Thanks.” I turn, reach for the door—and just before opening it, glance to my right, glimpsing a man at an old-style jukebox, flipping through the plastic pages listing the names of the songs.

  ***

  Mozart, Requiem. Bach, Saint Matthew’s Passion. Beethoven, Mass in C.

  Headlights moved across the wall. I straightened up and cocked my head. Not the sound of my father’s ancient Plymouth Valiant. It passed the house and I returned to thumbing through his records.

  Fauré, Requiem. Bach, Cantatas 32 and 79. Brahms, A German Requiem. You’d have thought he’d bought his collection from a funeral home going out of business. I wondered what he found in such music. The fantasy of a vast chorus of adoring mourners around his coffin? So much about him was a mystery.

  I closed the record cabinet door, walked to a window, and gazed outside. Fireflies were flashing on and off between the house and the barn, their lights forming fleeting constellations. I stood and watched for several minutes, feeling strange having nothing more pressing to do than to look out the window at insects. Life with my mother was never like that. Trying to put myself to some use, I picked up the sack of butter-and-sugar corn that Owen had brought and put it in the fridge—next to the bag of string beans he’d brought the day before. Why did he bother bringing this stuff when he knew we had a garden of our own? Returning, I wandered about the living room, neatening shelves of books, blowing off dust, realizing how unmistakably manly its furnishings were: the photo of the 1946 Red Sox, the rodent skulls on the mantelpiece, the brass pipe holder, the fly fishing books, the Sporting News lying on the cluttered desk. Having never lived with males, I’d always thought them a mysterious breed, and now felt as if I were poking around a museum of masculinity, seeing close up how these strange creatures lived.

  I meandered back toward the window and halted. Moths were thronging about the porch light, left on for my father, who was at his editor’s weekend house fifty miles away. I hoped he was on his way home by now. Not that he was such charming company, but simply to have another person around. It seemed such a different house without him. I wondered if he felt similarly eager to return, knowing that someone would be waiting—then I viewed the room, and doubted it. It was the living room, but he’d made it his office: a desk where a couch should have been, file cabinets, a typing table, two chairs, his pump organ. Proof of his nonexistent social life, the work of a man who’d chosen isolation.

  I looked at the phone, considered calling my mother, but resisted the temptation. I’d have felt obligated to tell my father about the call since it would show up on his bill, and though I didn’t mind admitting that I missed my mother and thought about her a lot, I didn’t want to give him the chance to crow that I couldn’t take solitude.

  I walked toward the case that held his own books, tilted my head, and scanned the titles. Stark’s First Case. Death on the Appalachian Trail. Death on Mt. Washington. Elegy for Virgil Stark. Murder at the MacDowell Colony. I pulled this one out. The cover showed a hung man, his legs dangling beside a typewriter on a desk. I read the description on the inside of the jacket and found it dealt with a vicious literary critic found dead at an artists’ retreat. Wishful thinking by my father, I suspected, and flipped through it, suddenly feeling guilty for never having read his books. On the other hand, he’d never read my grade-school stories, or my high-school term papers. I turned to his short biography at the back and saw that I was nowhere mentioned. Something, I knew, that shouldn’t have surprised me—yet I felt disappointed. Flipping to the front, I realized that the book wasn’t dedicated to anyone. I pulled out three others and found them the same. If it was true that no man is an island, my father was at least a peninsula.

  I sat down with the book about the literary critic and had just begun reading when my father drove up. Not wanting to embarrass both of us by gratefully greeting him on the porch, I stayed seated and merely said “Hi” when he entered. He seemed ill-humored, didn’t answer, and plopped his wallet and keys on the desk.

  “How did it go with your editor?”

  I watched him walk across the room, knowing exactly what he’d do next. While other adults had a drink when they came home, or sat in front of the television, my father relaxed by playing his pump organ.

  “Terrific,” he snapped. Sitting down before it, he worked the pedals to build up some pressure, pulled out a few stops, pushed in others, and spoke while he played something sad and slow from a beat-up book of Duke Ellington songs. “My editor is less than thrilled about the manuscript I just submitted. My publisher’s verging on bankruptcy. And the accounting department’s decided to let three more Virgil Stark books go out of print.”

  The organ seemed to be lamenting this news.

  “What exactly does ‘out of print’ mean?”

  My father looked peeved. “What it means is dead! No longer stocked and sold! Kaput!”

  I searched for something consoling to say.

  “Six titles dropped in the last two years!” In his agitation he pressed the pedals harder, raising the organ’s volume and forcing him to speak even louder to be heard above it. “It’s like having your garden ravaged by grasshoppers! Or seeing your children slain before your eyes!” He swayed back and forth on his stool while he played. “Parents, they say, should die before their children. Likewise, authors before their books. Something I thought I’d doubtless accomplish, given the condition of my heart.”

  I rolled my eyes. He flipped a page and returned to th
e beginning of the song.

  “Maybe you should try something besides mysteries.” I thought I’d made a helpful suggestion. When the music halted at once, I knew better.

  “After twenty-one years, twelve short stories, and seventeen novels—abandon Virgil Stark?”

  Instantly, I understood why he didn’t subscribe to a newspaper. His poetry-loving detective was real to him; Virgil’s latest case was his news. He was sustained by his artificial world, with no interest in the one reported in the papers, the one my mother and I tried to better. Were all artists, I wondered, so self-absorbed?

  “This is the advice of the prospective heir whose duties would include continuing the series in my absence?’’

  “I withdraw the proposal.” I could see I’d be better off changing the subject. “By the way, your friend Flora called while you were gone.”

  My father got up and took a pipe from his rack. “Friend!” He packed it with tobacco and lit it. “God save me from that woman’s clutches. Something He could easily do, by making my next book a bestseller. One look at my name on the New York Times list and that pest, doomed to the failure she pretends to admire, would never speak to me again.” He smiled at the thought.

  “I put the note on your desk.”

  “With luck I won’t find it. As you may have noticed, Neatness is only a very minor deity in my personal pantheon.”

  I viewed his desktop, covered to a depth of six inches with books, papers, note pads, and what looked like a month’s worth of unopened mail. “The same,” I remarked, “apparently goes for the god of prompt replies.” I waved off a smoke cloud drifting my way.

  “Mail improves with age, like wine. Something your mother never understood. She couldn’t let a letter sit for a day without answering it.” He shook his head. “No doubt she spent a past life in debtors’ prison, and determined this time around to be a creditor in every department—including that of correspondence. Always took pleasure in knowing the tides of mail were running in her direction. The Fundy Theory of Epistolary Behavior. No doubt she’s written an article on it.”