The Death of All Things Seen

by Michael Collins

  And yet in saying so, she had cared deeply for Negroes, or certain Negroes attached to the house, those who knew their place. She held scandalous opinions, arguing how freedom so suddenly earned brought on the reality of not actually having a job. There were many Negroes who never left the land or the houses, Negroes not so much moved by Lincoln and The Emancipation Proclamation. What she thought of race relations was that the North had just asked the wrong Negroes what they wanted. She believed it.

  There was the divining sense, in so describing the full aspect of her character, that she had maintained an absolute commitment to a history that would define her the longer she stayed away from the South and the more her looks failed her.

  Or, to put it another way, she would become a caricature of the South.

  Nate’s memories of Virginia were of the godawful Southern drawl of genteel manners, the strange affectation of men with a peculiar aplomb for drink and silk neckerchiefs – men like his grandfather who held onto tobacco too long, the South becoming decidedly conservative as the mania for a healthy lifestyle took hold – people wanting to stay alive as long as possible at the expense of actually living when the obvious truth was, there were those who died, those who survived, and then those in between. It was by then a great hardship to find tobacco, the surviving crop that, beyond the abomination of cotton, could be the new scourge – the South, twice damned.

  His father had explained it once in defense of his mother, the fierce pride of the South, how the South became more and more extreme and looked eventually to a distant past and their Bible so they truly believed the world was approximately 5,000 years old. When you began fighting science, when you went down that road of fanaticism, when you defied facts, you ended up believing God put the dinosaurs down on earth, alongside the first humans, so the world was configured like a passable episode of The Flintstones.

  *

  Against his better judgment, Nate ordered a whiskey at the bar in The Drake. He was looking for evidence of a past, of some sense of a presence. He knew the outline of his father’s history. He was telling it to a ghost, Ursula beside him in a small booth.

  It began over drinks, his father’s courtship. Teddy is what his mother called his father when recalling the good times. She had been dining with a gentleman at The Drake.

  His father described having been captivated by her advancing and then dismissive stare, watching her eyes follow him. There had been a brazen charge to the occasion, his father, drunk in the mediating company of fellow recruits in a carousel of what the war years then allowed – a fraternity of men in a trawl of bars, in advance of the hell that awaited them.

  Nate looked to the sepia light of the bar. It was there if he looked closely. The afterlife of what happened was left, its essence. All he had to do was see it. As the story went, his father, struck by the loss of so much in life and determined that each opportunity must be seized, had begun walking back and forth against a great paned window, affecting a Nazi goose-step. Then he waited round front.

  Shelby Pettigrew showed with a haughty independence, smelling of mint julep and tobacco. She wore mink stoles and pumps. His father learned that the man she was dining with was her distant relation and that she was from the South, the latter fact betrayed by her accent.

  At the time, Shelby was in the countdown of a dwindling allowance. She had been sent North to secure a Yankee Republican husband passable to a Confederate father looking to hold onto the past. Yet, for all the apparent deceit behind it, his mother carried his father through the war, or, more exactly, he carried her.

  Before he shipped out, she gave his father a picture of her taken on a tobacco plantation, her hands on her hips in riding jodhpurs that accentuated thighs that had held him in a gallop of a lust experienced just twice before his deployment because he felt compelled to know what awaited his return.

  He kept her image against the shrapnel of Dear Johns, those letters that found their way into the Pacific before the assault on unnamed beaches, responses written within the hull of a ship, or a bunker, letters reaching home long after events had passed and, in many instances, taken the lives of those who had penned them.

  Shelby Pettigrew was pregnant. She had informed his father soon after he shipped out. She lost the child eventually, but it made a great difference to his father’s survival.

  Across the great distance that separated them, it was enough to know she loved him, but, regrettably, in reconvening in a time of peace, when there was less at stake, what they could not bear to lose – at one point, one another – seemed less important, less necessary to their mutual survival.

  *

  Nate looked up in the stream of light from the world emerging beyond. Day had broken into dense clouds threatening snow. He pinched at tiredness between his eyes, the day not yet begun, and there was so much yet to accomplish.

  Nate drank again. He felt the burn in his throat. Drinking was ill advised in his condition. He caught up again with the story for Ursula’s sake. There was a part left out, the intervening years of his parents’ life. It was not explained fully. He had the story in his head.

  Ursula said it didn’t matter, though it mattered greatly to Nate. He was agitated.

  The barman came over and asked if Nate was okay. He was apparently talking aloud. He apologized. It mattered little. There was nobody in the bar, yet Nate set his drink away as a measure of contrition. He announced that he had arrived in from Canada.

  The barman stared at him, vacant as a spoon, then left.

  Nate was then suddenly quiet. He felt Ursula awaiting him in the way she must have navigated the petulance of Frank Grey Eyes.

  Nate closed his eyes to catch up with the story, at the point where it had gone wrong.

  There was the cofounding influence from the very beginning of Harper Delacroix, the Southern gentleman Shelby had dined with the night she had met Nate’s father. Delacroix had harbored designs on Shelby that had always lurked in the shadowy murk of a sexual longing that most probably could never have been quite fulfilled. Delacroix was portly and dandified and twenty years beyond Shelby’s age, and yet he confused the hell out of Nate’s father.

  Delacroix became a perennial presence at the house, or he arrived to take Shelby to tea at a club in the city. He was known simply as ‘Dear Cousin’, his stout figure centered over the knob of a cane. He carried a pocket watch. He maintained an interest in the Kentucky Derby. He advised Shelby on what hats and dresses to wear. He had certain affectations and standards when it came to women. He was not beyond reminding her of the innate beauty of her shape.

  He used his cane to poke her calves and mid-thigh, lifting her hemline with a sanctioned impropriety because he had an eye for style and he paid for everything. He plied her with sherry and other aperitifs served in small crystal glasses, so she gained a measure of how a day of ease might have been so enjoyed before the shifting influence of change and a spurious democracy. They were decided between them that they were living in terrible times.

  The truth was that if Delacroix had been anything but what he was, maybe Nate’s father could have intervened. Nate’s father stayed at the golf club, recused from any definitive judgment. Shelby was lost to him anyways, with or without Delacroix.

  This entrenchment of Delacroix in their lives continued and with greater frequency during the legal suits against the tobacco industry. There were by then, hearings at the state level, and then eventually at the Supreme Court. Delacroix’s practice was center stage in the Southern defense, and, though it was a losing proposition to be on the side of tobacco, it paid handsomely nonetheless. It mattered little which side you were on when you were at the top. There was money to go round for all involved.

  Delacroix represented not so much a legal presence, as a fast-disappearing world of genteel manners. He puffed a redolent, sweet tobacco, so the scent of his presence lingered long after he was gone. He took Shelby to Washington DC for a series of congressional hearings, maintained decorum by call
ing her ‘Dear Cousin’ to the great interest of hotel and congressional staff alike. Shelby took a five-minute egg, wholegrain toast, orange juice and black coffee. The waiters knew her by name. Theirs was a life in great ruin, yet between them, they maintained the allure of something grand and dignified.

  Nate’s father suffered the indignity. Shelby had all but left him. They had separate bedrooms, separate lives. He had been the future once, young and handsome, then, suddenly a silver-haired alcoholic with a great mistrust of everything he had once held close.

  He had money. That was never the issue. It was just that he didn’t spend it with the lavish excess Delacroix spent it. It took a special talent, when, to Nate’s father, much of what was purchased was unessential. That was it, eventually, a profoundly different worldview, no better, no worse.

  *

  Nate ended with the impartiality that nothing could ever be charged against another, and that there were ways of seeing around all sides of a life in the equanimity of how Ursula would have seen it. She influenced him still.

  He might have had another drink in advance of going to the offices of Weatherly, Sutherland, and Saunders to steel his nerves. There was time yet, but he thought better of it. The barman was not a friend.

  Instead, Nate checked his phone to see if Norman Price had responded. He hadn’t.

  It left Nate undecided what he should do. He felt a diffuse hurt in the subtle rejection of such a benign and considered request to meet. Surely, Norman Price could have politely excused himself with a prior engagement, anything but simply not answering.

  Nate was resolved to try again when the pain in his side made him brace and set his hand against the table.

  Before leaving The Drake, he crafted a brief, non-committal email, more a courtesy note without the suggestion of any intentionality or favor begging, a note not dissimilar to how one might have in days gone by sent a telex: Arrived safely at The Drake. Taking Dinner at 8 – NF.

  18.

  NORMAN WAS COMMITTING a great infidelity in his heart. He was downtown in the Loop and hadn’t yet called Joanne. He was considering calling Kenneth. He had the pretext that he had learned what the police believed had happened to Einhorn. He would like to apologize. He had in his head an opening of quiet contrition. Enough time had passed that they might talk civilly. He deeply regretted how it had ended between them.

  Norman checked his email from an Internet café. He figured that maybe Joanne had emailed by now in a general alarm over what had happened to him. She hadn’t. But Nate Feldman had.

  Norman read in the single line the overture of Nate’s persistence, asking and not asking Norman to dinner in that subtle, condescending smarm that was so patently Feldman. Norman decided that at times the only way to compete with prose like that was to not respond. Silence spoke volumes to anything he might have written.

  Nate Feldman would be back in Canada soon and that would be the end of it.

  While Norman was deciding what not to write to Nate Feldman, an email arrived from someone called Thomas Strait. He identified himself as a concerned friend of Kenneth Caudill, and went on to explain that Kenneth had been interviewed in connection with his allegedly attempting to blackmail Daniel Einhorn, but that everything was being handled. The email had the peculiar feel of an intercept to keep Norman from contacting Kenneth.

  Norman waited, considering how to respond, and then, as with Nate Feldman’s email, he understood that to not respond was the better option, though he continued to look at the name, Thomas Strait. It had a rural, puritanical literalism that incited a quiet interest in Norman, so he wondered, what the hell had Kenneth become mixed up in?

  *

  For the effect of indeterminacy, shame and humiliation, Norman called Joanne from a pay phone under the rumble of the L track.

  Joanne was home and alarmed. Norman prepared himself for the onslaught. It came, and in a way it was all too easy. Norman was forthright, humble and apologetic. He explained how Mr Ahmet, legal counsel to his father, had intervened and called in favors so the charges were dropped, and how, in view of the extraordinary allowances made on his behalf, Norman had not wanted to simply hang around the courthouse. He said it all in one breath.

  It was no excuse for not waiting or not calling sooner, but Joanne forgave him, as Norman knew she would have to. At the back of it was the issue of the pot that Joanne had hidden, her big screw up.

  Joanne said in a kindly, disarming tone. ‘I would have liked to have met your father.’

  It stopped Norman for a moment, the reach of her caring. He was on the verge of saying he was coming home when Joanne said, abruptly, ‘Is Kenneth with you?’

  It was the out Norman had been seeking. He said flatly. ‘I’m a liar, is that what you think?’ A silence hung between them. There was the sound of traffic, and a train on the L.

  A coin fell through the slot in the payphone, validating the fact that Norman was indeed at a payphone. He said, ‘Wait!’ He fumbled for another quarter and fed the phone and then continued contentiously, ‘Look him up on the Internet, Joanne. Mr Ahmet, defense lawyer.’

  Joanne, chastened and submissive, said, ‘I don’t need to look him up. Just come home, okay?’

  Norman didn’t answer her directly. There were conditions to his release. It was not as cut and dried as he had explained it. He had the name of a lawyer he had to see. There were legal documents that needed to be prepared to have the outstanding subpoena against him ‘quashed’, a legal term he pulled out of his head to add credence to his explanation.

  And there was the issue, too, of the rental still out in Winnetka. Norman asked if Joanne had called Alamo since they had not returned the car. She hadn’t.

  Norman said, ‘You should go get it. It’s in your name.’

  Joanne let Norman finish and then she said it against herself. ‘Grace is mad at me. Earlier I wouldn’t get her McDonald’s, and you know what she said? She looked me right in the eyes and said, “I want Daddy!”’

  It almost stymied Norman, but not quite.

  *

  Mill Shoals was a three-hour drive by Greyhound Bus into the isolated southern reaches of Illinois with its small white chapels.

  Norman sat low in his seat. He had not showered in two days. He had the box from Mr Ahmet on the seat beside him like a man intent on spreading the Word with small pamphlets of righteous damnation. Whatever he was thinking of his fellow passengers, he realized they must have been thinking the same of him. Who traveled Greyhound anymore?

  Every other row was left empty.

  Norman had emailed Kenneth via Thomas Strait, asking Thomas to pass on the message that he was arriving via Greyhound. He gave the estimated time of arrival.

  He would advance on an explanation with Joanne later. It was heartless and cruel, but there were times when the heart was set on what it wanted, what it needed.

  Joanne wasn’t going anywhere. She could do nothing else but wait. In so setting Joanne aside, in admitting it to himself, Norman felt a sudden raw cold in the after rush that he was on his way. It was decided. He was on a bus.

  Sleep dogged him. He was out minutes later. In sleeping, he encountered almost immediately the flash of Mr Ahmet’s face, the sifting images of photographs he had been shown, the grainy tableau of what had been the final sequence of his father and mother’s lives, and then the stark instance of Walter pointing a gun to the roof of his mouth.

  He awoke some time later and, clearing the window of condensation, stared into the grim façades of old factory buildings running alongside the bus. He was seeing and not seeing them. His mind was still elsewhere. He was processing a life long passed that still played in his head in the way his early work had been communed, distilled in the first awakenings where he had so often left the warmth of Kenneth behind, evinced that the singular truth to all great art was simply showing up. It had been an unencumbered life. He quietly assessed it against what he had with Joanne and Grace.

  *

 
If he had to make a determined judgment of absolute truth, Norman understood in his heart that Helen had not been needed in the years before Mr Feldman committed suicide, or not in the way business had once been convened. She was left idle with her dead shorthand language and spiral notebook, sequestered in her office fronting Mr Feldman’s office.

  Norman had observed it, what he didn’t understand fully then, but what he would come to understand years later – the fall off in numbers at the office, the cull of staff in the downsizing of mergers and acquisitions that had begun to trim the largesse of what had once been the great flagship of American dominance. It was the great fear of Mr Feldman’s come upon America. It was in Mr Feldman’s eyes, in his unease. He said the word Imports on more than one occasion when Norman was quietly oblivious to what was being announced.

  In looking back, Norman understood how there were less perks, less decorum, less allowances made for the two martini luncheons. There were no longer secretaries, but administrative assistants. New hires were required to type their own reports.

  Through those unsettling years, Mr Feldman had put on a front of congeniality, his last stand against a miserable and advancing age. He called Norman ‘Fauntleroy’, owing to the get-up of blazer and slacks Helen had insisted Norman always wear when he went into the city. Mr Feldman liked snappy dressers, while Helen, always in the offing, never failed to make mention of Norman’s grades, ‘straight As’, Mr Feldman quipping, ‘I dare say Fauntleroy here will have me out of a job if I’m not careful!’