The Death of All Things Seen

by Michael Collins

  The name Fauntleroy burned a hole through Norman even now. The condescension of it! The grades were always an overture to a traditional toast, Mr Feldman pouring a measure of Scotch, and another for Norman, and for Helen, too, so they could make a toast, ‘To Fauntleroy!’ Mr Feldman downing his shot, then swooping in and drinking Norman’s shot, and what remained of Helen’s, before bustling them to lunch at his club where the report card was set out on the table as evidence of a great and burgeoning mind, and at some point in the charade, the general manager always arriving on cue, whereupon he proceeded to hold the report card up to the light to make sure it wasn’t a forgery, and, satisfied it was not, dutifully notified Fauntleroy that when he came of age, there was room for him at The Club.

  It came again, a surging memory of something long sublimated, these emblazoned days set against the reality of that impoverished home life: Walter arriving home with a Dutch Apple Crumble picked from the discount rack on the occasion of all As, the goddamned sticker announcing, ‘Day-Old!’ when it might as well have read, ‘Don’t Give a Shit!’

  It was always there, the abject comparison of this pathetic celebration set against the realization that there was another way, a better way, and that a man from the middle of goddamn nowhere, from Saint Cloud, Minnesota, had gained it, and that nothing had been granted him that hadn’t been earned.

  *

  Norman pissed into a chemical swill of aqua dye that sloshed with clots of shit and toilet paper. The mirror was a distorted sheet of metal, not a mirror in the real sense, because nobody on a Greyhound bus could be trusted to see the real self.

  The bus turned onto a county road, meandering through a series of abandoned storage buildings along a curve of river. In the distance, Norman stared as the arm of a giant silo swung out over a glint of river the color of mercury. He had his face against the warmth of glass.

  There had been a bustle of trade here once. He was aware of it. At a point in the distant past, those who lived here had stood on the side of the Union, when the issue of slavery and the rights of men held, when great sacrifice had been called for and blood had been spilt and families torn asunder in the cause of Freedom.

  It stirred something within him. He sat upright. Yes, minds here had settled important issues, because places like this were more vibrant and alive a century before.

  Of course, progress was not uniform, and what rose in one place caused a death elsewhere, so, here, the prospect of a livelihood gained from a host of associated industries – barrel making, a forge for making plows, fixing wheels, a feed store, a barber, a general store, all the necessities of life – disappeared. It was sad to give witness to its death.

  At an intersection, a pickup truck pulled alongside. Norman could see a rifle mounted across the rear cab window, and a hunting dog sentinel beside its owner on bench-style seating. It accounted for a way of life, as much a part of the American experience as its greatness.

  19.

  IN THE GREY dark of his hotel room, Nate was inclined to understand how a Holy War, or the idea of a suicide bombing, its conception and then the commitment to it, might be better sustained by staying in a hotel room, in a bewildering disorientation with a minibar charging six dollars for a bottle of water.

  He regretted the thought. He was not thinking straight.

  *

  Nate had the film reels. He had received them at the Law Office of Weatherly, Sutherland, and Saunders, all three present at an office skyrise with varnished trim, leather-back chairs and an ornate throw rug.

  Collectively, all three had looked like the three pigs had finally gotten it right and forsaken the shoddy construction of straw and stick houses. Their names were embossed in gold lettering across the entrance. A glass elevator soundlessly arrived on the floor and opened. Nate stepped out onto the tiled expanse of a marbled floor.

  In coming south he felt a greater awareness of distance and how time imposed itself that he had not experienced in the hideaway of his life with Ursula, where the seasonality dictated an easier, more rote existence, perhaps no less tied to time, but there was a sense now he was moving against a clock.

  He had a time-stamp from the garage where his car was parked. The first hour was thirty-six dollars, and it went up from there, – this on top of the valet parking fee at The Drake. The car was gathering a great expense in just existing.

  He didn’t like the feeling, how money was made while nothing was being created, how an empty space could account for so much on the ledger of some accounting book somewhere, but it could, and did.

  A beautiful Latino secretary with almond-shaped eyes reminded Nate instantaneously of Ursula, her skin tone the same, her hair similarly long, but she wore too much lipstick, and she was in high heels and a short skirt.

  She was a great distraction. She looked past him while he waited, while the lawyers, in the custom of selling their time, talked among one another, checking their watches before the appointed time Nate was expected. He was ten minutes early, so Nate waited, and they waited, as though he didn’t exist.

  The secretary might have been an incarnation of Ursula, but, in this life, Nate didn’t matter in the way he had previously. It struck him how a life moved through cycles, the realities of what you might have, what you had, what you lost, and what you would never have again. He felt a stabbing pain where it hurt nearly always now.

  The three lawyers had a decided opinion about Norman Price. Helen Price’s last will and testament had been harder to execute, given Norman Price’s unwillingness to serve as executor. A small fortune was lost on associated legal documents.

  It seemed a quibble and strange that any one lawyer, let alone all three, Weatherly, Sutherland, and Saunders were concerned with what was a minor legal matter, given the grandeur of their office and the clientele they represented. The reels were the last disbursement associated with the will.

  It had taken time to track Nate Feldman. According to Weatherly, the law office had hired a private investigative agency. It was through documents connected with the sale of Nate’s organics business, specifically, the uncovering of an outstanding IRS bill for unpaid capital gains that led to Nate being located in Canada.

  The law office prided itself on its thoroughness and professionalism. They had a facsimile of the bill from the IRS and Nate’s social security number printed in block lettering. Weatherly went about handing the facsimile over. Nate had the presence of mind not to take receivership of it. He knew enough about the law.

  It was apparent then, Weatherly, Sutherland, and Saunders, all three, were Nate’s age. What they wanted was to have it known that they had served with distinction in the US military during the Vietnam War. It seemed principally for the benefit of the Latino secretary. Perhaps she didn’t fully understand their collective sacrifice. Their military pictures were mounted alongside their law degrees and an American flag.

  There was an IRS statute that all American citizens living abroad were required to pay US taxes. Sutherland pointedly asked, ‘Are you a US citizen still?’

  Nate politely refused to answer. He felt a grave and sudden danger that this had been a grand trap to bring him back to America. It turned out not to be the case. Weatherly, Sutherland, and Saunders were just asserting their collective history. It was that simple.

  The terms of Helen’s will as pertaining to him was read, the minutes taken by the Latino secretary. The lawyers dispersed to their various palatial offices. Appointments were lined up. Each office was almost identical. Each looked out on the city in the great expanse of glass and light amidst the upper-reaches of the other skyscrapers.

  It proved a powerful and evocative sight, reminding Nate of his father’s office, and how hard it was to scale to such heights, and that, after the day schools and the great promise he had shown early, he lived now in the shadow of a hill by a lake six hours northwest of Toronto. It was not so much a lament, as a fact.

  The Latino secretary executed the release of the reels as Nate went
about signing the forms, but then hesitated. He first read the disclosure statement with the distinct fear that, if he didn’t do so, he might have been signing some document of admission, some legal statement of guilt.

  The Latino secretary was on the phone. Moments later another Hispanic woman, less pretty and older, appeared from a back office. A conversation, the entirety of it, was conducted in Spanish, so Nate was a stranger, twice removed in his own country.

  It would be a few minutes longer, the Latino secretary advised him. He was obliging, cordial and enamored with her. He recalled again the same breathless anticipation of how he had used to sit in advance of Ursula serving him, before she had arrived at his cabin with her rhubarb pie.

  It was strange, how a history went two ways, this Latino’s run for the border, a history she might tell her children and grandchildren, while he had escaped America. He might have told her about Ursula and his own life, or how a beauty like hers shouldn’t be cheapened with lipstick, stockings and heels.

  *

  Nate Feldman might have left Chicago. There was nothing that held him, but he had been up since 5 a.m. He knew he should rest. He would leave at first light the next day.

  He looked up in the rush of emotion and tried to set his mind elsewhere. So much was lost to him. Nothing was as he remembered really.

  The room, for instance, hadn’t the luxury he had anticipated. The windows lay in the shadow of other buildings, in the slim margin of a reduced and angled light.The largesse of what he assumed had been there before was now gone. The attached suites and a bar area had been swapped out for the confinement of refurbished rooms cut in size from their original grandeur to boxy rooms with a king size bed so Nate had to literally walk over the bed to get to the small bathroom comprised of a stand-up shower, sink and a toilet wedged against a towel rack radiator, hot as an iron.

  This had happened, these changes, since the Vietnam era. When he had left, there had still been the Playboy Mansion facing the Lake, and an understanding that certain women might spend their best years in rabbit ears, bunny tails and heels, toting trays of cigarettes and cigars, and that neither the city nor the country, nor the women for that matter, saw any contradiction, subjugation or irony in any of it.

  His father had subscribed to Playboy, kept it within reach on a nightstand. What he could say was that there was no Playboy Mansion anymore. It had disappeared from the skyline. Not that it was undone, the baser instinct that kept the species going, these instincts confined now to a rougher sexual content percolating just below the surface, to a place off of center – so, on the Internet, there were sites where it was not uncommon to see a girl eating cum from the gaping asshole of another girl. It was a search word away.

  Nate stood in the grey dark, yawned and then checked his email. He was waiting for something without acknowledging he had been waiting for something, waiting for Norman Price’s email.

  Norman Price had not replied, so Nate was reconciled that there never would be a meeting. He let the fact settle amidst the dispirited sense that there was no going back ever.

  Life moved on.

  He was tired and yet he could not sleep. Minutes later he was back online. He did a search for an old-fashioned reel-to-reel projector. The reels were of that vintage. He searched Craigslist and found a projector offered by someone in Chicago. He might yet view the tapes before leaving for home.

  It was done, the search and bid in less than twenty minutes.

  In the stand-up shower, under the high-pressure water, he tried to release a memory of what Ursula was like. Disconcertingly, her face refused to show itself. What he saw was the Latino secretary, so it was hard to hold on to what was then and what was now.

  *

  Nate reached for the blankets, drew himself into a ball on the bed. He felt the smallness of the room around him. He thought of the lawyers in their prejudicial assessment of him. What did they know of his life really! Those early years of a new beginning where nothing had come easy or been granted him. He could say that in all honesty. The organics business had begun as a means of subsistence, a supplement to the wages he had drawn at the mill.

  The work at the mill was then new to him, but in the act of physical labor he had grown strong and confident, and, though it had put him on an equal footing with those who had worked the mill their entire lives, he had quietly taken a correspondence course with an agricultural college.

  He was with Ursula at that point, the quiet insistence of her presence compelling a great and earnest want in him to do better, to make a home for her. They had savings in a jar, wads of bills with the picture of Queen Elizabeth, a decree of royal patronage that somehow subtly denied the present its absolute hold on life. He believed that, to achieve great things, you had to move outside the influence of yourself, that you had to spin in the vortex of a space you created that let you be within and outside what you were.

  In this belief, he shared a truth with Frank Grey Eyes, that, in all traditions there had been the presiding influence of a psyche, be it a guardian angel or a modern day shrink. You had to distance yourself from the self.

  In that process of self-improvement, Ursula had brought him scones and flat cakes and black tea sweetened with honey and watched him study, so Nate was conscious of the act of the act of watching her watch him. Their lives grew in a deeper soil.

  Ursula had kept the doors in the cabin open out of native habit, the world alive with sound. This was her world and she would not be dissuaded. She listened to the purling throat of the falls at the edge of Grandshire. She could identify the cry of osprey, geese and loons. She called Nate’s attention to the insistent tap-a-tat-tat of woodpeckers, and the far-off whine of the sawmill. She could read the seasons in the cry of animals, in the directional shift of winds. She was a student in her own right.

  Nate had followed the advice of provincial government pamphlets received through the mail out of Ottawa. There was help in the way the federal government in the United States had once been a friend to the farmer, to the rugged individualist. He used a potash fertilizer as a hold against a depleted soil, grew a cold hardy root crop of beets, rutabaga, squash, yams, sweet potatoes, parsnips and carrots. He tapped a line of trees for maple syrup, ordered a colony of bees from Prince Edward Island and planted a winter hardy grape vine and apple trees. It became a homestead slowly.

  He worked on his studies early in the morning before leaving for the mill, and late in the evening after work, by candlelight in the advancing fall when the sun fell early and there were not enough hours in the day.

  When he did so, Ursula made a habit of approaching, spectral as a ghost, and without a word, she simply blew out the candle, so there was an absolute and sudden darkness and the day was done.

  Nate shifted and turned in the dark. It was there again as it had been, just the two of them alone in the world. He said Ursula’s name aloud.

  When Ursula became pregnant, Nate had heated water in a tub, buckets drawn from a piebald cobble stone river, the flashing ribbon of it seen through the gaps in the trees in late evening, the rushing force of it almost always toppling him.

  There was the outside, and then there was the two of them, alone in the world. And out of that love was born a third, a child. Ursula said this was how love was divided and shared. He had felt the heel of a foot in the universe of her womb, a child in the watery sack beginning life the way all life began as a oneness, which was not a fanciful, native myth, but a biological truth readily revealed in any middle school biology textbook.

  What he recalled of those days was the bite of the axe running up along his arms, the centered sense of a life so contained and the hungry mouths of the traps that snapped unseen in the finality of a sudden and merciful end. There was that much bounty to be received from the land if one sought it.

  They delivered the child at home, without real understanding, just instinct. It was enough. Nate brought Ursula leavened bread with honey as she sat before the fire and bled between her l
egs while the baby suckled.

  *

  Nate awoke to an alert on his phone and from a dream where the world was again restored, where he had dreamed, not of the Latino secretary, but of Ursula, in the way she had existed for him alone.

  In checking the phone he saw his bid on Craigslist had been accepted. For a fee the projector could be expedited and delivered by late afternoon.

  20.

  JOANNE AND GRACE ate a Happy Meal downtown because sometimes McDonald’s was the right choice.

  Back home, Joanne smoked a joint and felt the slow release of tension, resigned that her fate was being decided elsewhere. Randolph came and licked her hand.

  From the doorway, she watched Grace asleep in her bed. She could see, too, in the living room, the disconsolate tent set up over her heirloom table. The joke was long stale. Norman had been right about almost everything in her life. The heirloom table had not sold. In Norman’s office, she looked at the board of The New Existence. She was just glad she was on it.

  *

  Peter Coffey told a series of lies and some truths, not necessarily in any order, when Joanne called him. She had done a very bad thing for a nanny. She had left her charge alone, slipped out and rented a movie at the convenience store that made its trade in more illicit, pornographic movies, though, there was still the clawing nostalgia for faded cassettes like ET, Jaws, Poltergeist, and Close Encounters. She had seen the box sets on display on her walks with Grace.

  She was gone a matter of minutes.

  She stared at the cassette boxes. Youth still lived within these films. The great genius of Spielberg’s Poltergeist, reconstituting and making innocuously entertaining the genocide mass burial of Indians, rising in a California subdivision, when the Jewish holocaust must have been alive in Spielberg’s soul. There were histories allowed or disallowed, or that was not it exactly. It was not a matter of censor, but rather that there was great fortune to be made in the quiet distraction of a lesser, apolitical history, and those who understood it, they were the new historians of a sublimated and complicated history.