Pequannock, to see his boys.
Eastman was reminded of his daughter, Helen. Her twentieth birthday was approaching. If he went to Vietnam he would have to telephone her from Saigon. She was a student up at Vassar, a choice Eastman was happy to pay for, thinking he would see so much more of her now that she was in New York, but he saw about as much of her as he did when she was growing up in Mexico. While he was away he would need to write to the boys. If he could phone, that would be better. He didn’t want them to get too used to his absence. He needed to keep a fatherly presence, otherwise Penny would get the best of them. They would favor their mother simply because she was the one around.
The house in Pequannock was a white two-story colonial with black shutters. Cathy had had the yard and bushes landscaped professionally. Outside, an American flag. The fact that Cathy still hung it after her husband passed away made him feel a bit sorry for her. With his son’s squashy pillow in hand, he made his way across the Kentucky bluegrass and up to the front door and knocked hard with the brass handle.
A neighbor’s dog barked and Eastman waited, the early sun already too warm on his back. It was just about eight. It would be one of the first hot summer days.
Cathy came to the door in her terry-cloth robe.
“Alan, you’re here early.”
“I brought Toby’s pillow.”
Cathy looked past him at the street and seemed somewhat unsteady.
“Come in, Alan.”
“Are the boys up?”
“Not yet. They stayed up watching the late movie.”
He hesitated to ask about Penny as he entered the living room, having a look around. Green sofa, coffee table, a big standing television. The coffee table was clean, which meant Cathy had stayed up with the boys and cleaned up whatever they snacked on during the movie. If his wife had been there, Cathy would have gone to bed at a normal hour and Penny would have left whatever mess the boys had made for the next morning. It was safe to assume that she hadn’t made it back. She had stayed out late on her date.
Cathy went to the kitchen to put on some coffee. He sat on the sofa and looked at his reflection in the grayness of the TV screen. He was a stocky figure bound in sweats.
While Cathy made the coffee, he went upstairs to look in on Lee and Toby. They were asleep in the guest room, together in a brass bed. It made him uneasy to see them like that, sharing the bed, their suitcases spread out on the floor. Toy soldiers were set up in some kind of battle on the circular rug. The green versus the black. A small pocket of red invaders. Indians on horses that didn’t quite match the time period. Little men with bayonets pointed at each other, flags raised. What kind of war were his boys waging? The Alamo or the taking of Hamburger Hill? It was more innocent than that, it had to be. They were children. They didn’t yet know about American conflict, unless he told them. And he told them enough of his days in the Pacific. Though Lee was of that age when he would be taking American history, he wondered if they taught boys Lee’s age at that Quaker school about the bombing of Pearl Harbor and Nagasaki? He made his way through the battlefield on the rug. One little soldier—a red!—caught him underfoot and he swiped at the toys with his tennis shoe. By Toby’s bedside, he watched his son sleeping, the slim sheets bundled together in his arms. Eastman carefully lifted the boy’s limp hand and brought the favorite pillow into his son’s embrace. Then, without wanting to wake his sleeping angel, he pressed the pillow as deep against Toby’s body as he could. He lifted his son’s arm again to gather more of an arm’s length. When he would awake he would have everything he once had, minus his mother and father and his home, but Eastman was here to fix all that.
Toby’s right eye opened for a moment. Eastman winked at him and the boy went back to sleep, moving a bit, bringing his leg over his favorite pillow as if it had been there all along. Sitting there, watching his son drift between sleep and dream, Eastman felt a deep connection to the half-asleep boy—his son!—a connection that surprised him with its intensity and filled him with joy.
Eastman remembered his own childhood, which could be called troubled by today’s standards. His father, Bert, would come home around this very same hour, not from a night of philandering, at least not known philandering, but from a card table somewhere in Flatbush or Canarsie. The sun would just be breaking the sky, and little Eastman would rouse himself at the sound of Bert’s Model A Ford rattling into a space in front of their building, and he would lie awake listening to his father’s keys rattle along the sidewalk and then through their front door and onto the hook in the foyer. He’d listen to the squeak of the floorboards as Bert approached to take a peek into Eastman’s room. The smell of smoke from his father’s overcoat would overtake him and Eastman would have his eyelids partially open but still visibly shut to his father. Bert would just take that peek at his sleeping son and then quietly close the door and sneak off to the living room, where he would sleep an hour or two before he had to be off to work.
The song of Bert’s car coming home, rattling, shifting, steering through his son’s sleep. (The car would disappear from their lives for some months, held for collateral with a loan shark, only to reappear without explanation. It finally went to Mr. Landau on Eastern Parkway, who bought it when Bert was in an irredeemable hole.) No other idiot species on earth can make those sounds. No other idiot animal sneaks home in a machine, the loudest of machines.
Toby’s eyes opened and settled on Eastman hovering next to the bed, and this is when Eastman knew his wife was home. Those sounds weren’t only in his head, he wasn’t the only one hearing them.
Not so quietly, a car door slammed. And Eastman was down the stairs and at the front screen door before he could hear the click of any heel walking toward the house.
His phantom drove a Lincoln, a very unhip automobile, and he saw it pulled over to the curb in front of the house, unable to fit into the driveway because of the two cars already in it. Cathy’s hunk of junk and his Saab.
For Penny it had been an all-nighter. She was stuffing a cardigan sweater into her oversized purse, peering over at his car in the driveway. She was tired and maybe a bit anxious, because she didn’t yet notice him through the screen door. The Lincoln idled, waiting for her to enter the house. So he was a gentleman. The least he could do.
Eastman went outside, descended the brick porch, and walked across the damp lawn toward her, his tennis shoes wet at the toes, sweat stains already under his armpits.
She looked at him nonplussed, as if she couldn’t believe he still existed. He continued in her direction and held a judgmental eye. Was he overdoing it? Sure. He was trying to work up enough judgment in one foul look without having to say anything. Making Penny feel awful inside. As awful as he felt.
“Alan,” she said, but he walked past her almost with a clever smirk, not even stopping to give her the word she deserved. He would deal with her later. He walked past her and out to the curb toward the idling car.
“Alan, stop,” she called after him.
But he didn’t stop. Eastman gathered all he had and stepped out into the street on such a perfectly wet summer morning. He got in front of the car, the oversized Lincoln, and the same judgmental gaze he used on his wife he now applied to the windshield and whoever was behind the windshield. Most of this was a tough-guy act. He wasn’t really a tough guy. He had known some tough guys in his life, boys in Crown Heights, marines in the Pacific. He wasn’t one of them, even though he would never back down from the chance to prove that he was. Intimidation, fear, a touch of the imbalanced, these were the intimations Eastman wanted his phantom to grasp as he stood there in the street. He placed his arms on his hips. He must have looked kind of ridiculous in his gray sweat suit, like an overweight prizefighter. Funny how he cared so much about his appearance at a time like this.
From his vantage point he was incapable of making out his phantom. There was a case to be made for him not ent
irely wanting to know. The top portion of the man’s windshield had that tacky blue tint that came down four, five inches, which shielded his phantom’s eyes. Eastman could only make out his mustache, a small mouth and a chin, strong and prominent by any standard. Eastman tried to channel a message. What are you gonna do now, shit stick? Go ahead, throw it into gear. I want you to run away. Show her who you really are. Run away. Eastman tilted his head down in order to make out the man’s face, but he remained a phantom. When Eastman crouched a little, the man raised his bold chin slightly so that his eyes remained behind the tinted portion of the stupid windshield. He looked like a Harlem pimp and it was hard for Eastman to get a grasp on the type of man he was dealing with. He could have been ethnic. Spanish, Indian. Hell, he could have been anything, Eastman couldn’t see him clearly.
All this time Penny had been calling him back from the curb, but Eastman ignored her.
“Get out of the car,” he said. He was being calm, which he hoped would make the man sweat a little. “Get out of the car or I’ll take you out of the car.” Eastman was pointing now, and his rage was true, it was taking over.
“Alan, you’re acting like an idiot. Please get out of the road.”
“I’ll get out of the road when he gets out of the car. I’ll even be polite.” He returned to speaking to the man behind the tinted glass. “Get out of the fucking car, please. Let’s discuss this like men do. And by this, I mean my wife. You knew she was my wife?”
Still nothing. He stepped to the car and the car came forward and abruptly stopped. “Are you nuts? Get out!” The wheels steered left toward the center of the road, and Eastman pivoted, at the ready were the man to hit the gas and make a run for it. The car idled forward a bit and then drifted into the road, and Eastman shortened the distance between them and put his hands on the hood. The man stopped the car once again, and to Eastman it was clear that he had put the fear of God into this man, his phantom, and he wasn’t getting out. Eastman had him; this standoff was a show of wits and he was nearly victorious. There would be no punches thrown, thank heavens. He had won without the need for it. Still, there was the matter of him in front of the Lincoln holding on to the hood as if the vehicle were the horns of a bull. The car started again, slowly, and Eastman walked it backward, like a matador taming a bull, until they were in the center of the road. He planted his feet on the ground when he thought the man had enough, but the car kept creeping forward, and soon his entire body was on the hood. A sit-in! You remember, Penny. The shit you pulled as a graduate student. The car stopped. If the car moved any further he would have to jump onto the hood. Eastman, on his stomach, looked up once again into his phantom’s shielded face and told him to get out.
The car door opened and the interior lights came on, which didn’t help him see the man any better. My, he was getting out. Eastman had misjudged the situation and wasn’t ready to throw any punches. It was too late to back down now. Eastman got off the hood and made his way to the open door in order to attack, but the man shut the door and made a left maneuver forward. Eastman caught his profile for a brief second and banged on the driver’s window, then he ran to the front of the car to block it from passing once more. Ha! Bastard. The car was going nowhere until the man, with a stroke of ingenuity, threw it in reverse and took off backward down the block. Eastman found himself out of breath and watched the Lincoln navigate wearily to the end of the block, hook a backward left, and then hightail it out of there.
Neighbors were out on their front stoops and manicured lawns. Had Penny been screaming for him to stop this whole time? It woke the entire block, including his boys, who were now by the front screen door behind Cathy. Penny had her head in her hands, weeping.
Everyone was watching the tomfoolery in the street. He was fighting for her honor, couldn’t she see? Wasn’t that heroic enough? The thing he knew about being the hero is that it never had the effect he thought it should. What was heroic in his mind was shortsighted and self-serving in hers, and he could see that this was the case presently. Wasn’t what had just happened the sign of a passionate lover and someone who cared?
He walked back to the house and a neighbor called out, “Are you Alan Eastman?”
Eastman waved a dismissive hand and the neighbor called out to him, “Asshole!”
Penny walked ahead into the house and he followed her into the living room. Cathy must have taken the boys back upstairs in order for him to straighten things out.
“I’m not going to apologize,” he said. “I had no intention to hurt anybody, Penny, but that coward would not get out of his car to talk to me. I don’t know who he is. What kind of a man is he? And then he tries to run me over. You saw it. He tried to kill me in the street.”
“You embarrassed me.”
“I embarrassed you? Penny, you embarrassed yourself. Coming home at this hour. Out all night. What kind of a mother goes out on a date while she’s still married to her husband? When did you turn into this superb cunt?”
“Are you kidding me, you hypocrite? You’re going to scrutinize my behavior? I’m not going to let you judge me, Alan.”
“What other behavior is there to scrutinize. I’ve been home, Penny. I’ve been falling apart without my family. I need to know what is happening to us.”
“We had this talk, Alan. I’ve left you. What I do now is my own business. Now let go of my arm.”
He had been gripping her forearm tightly and hadn’t realized it. She brought this out in him. Would it be the last time he touched her? His wife, the mother of his children.
“Just answer me this,” he said. “Who is he? I just want to know who he is. It’s driving me nuts. He wouldn’t get out of the damn car. He tried to run me down. I may press charges. I have witnesses.”
“You are something else.”
“I just want to know what I’m up against. What’s his name?”
She wouldn’t answer him. Instead, she put her hand on his temple and pushed it with hatred. “Get out of here.”
“Penny.” He tried to plead with her.
“Get out of here.” She struck him on the ear and he raised his hands to defend himself. He grabbed her hands before she could take another swing at him and maneuvered her onto the couch.
“I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. I didn’t want to see you coming home like this.”
“Fuck you, you hypocrite. You know what I mean.”
“I don’t know what you mean. But I didn’t want to put myself in this position. I came to see our boys and talk to you. And say good-bye. And see you one more time, because I am leaving and I don’t know if I will be back.”
Penny’s eyes were still fuming with rage and he could see he wasn’t going to get through to her in this state. Sympathy is what he needed from her if his plan was going to work. Perhaps it would have been better if he had just let the john drop her off and drive away. Had he done that, they could have had a more civilized talk. What could he do now to save his marriage? He didn’t need to ask her what she wanted because he knew she needed time alone. Time with his absence, and only then would she see that she couldn’t live without him. Eastman tried to produce some tears. He cringed his eyes together until his face turned purple but he was too angry to cry.
He looked at her shaking her head in disgust. So he let go of her hands.
The two of them just sat there in the living room of Penny’s childhood, the house still, motionless.
He broke the silence by informing her that he was to leave in a few days’ time, as he had already said under pretense, but now it was very much the truth. He said she should move the boys back into the house a few days before his departure. He would like to spend time with them before he was off. She said, of course, they were his children. And the “of course” seemed to generate a little bit of sympathy. The morning’s fiasco was receding.
• • •
He knew now
that he wanted to go to Vietnam. There was still the matter of meeting Broadwater to fine-tune the details for the trip. As a correspondent, he would need to be in some sort of physical shape. That was why he was wearing sweats this morning. At some point he planned to go into his basement, where he still had a punching bag, a pull-up bar, some barbells. He had installed all this equipment years ago, when he was under the spell of boxing. Frustrated with his lack of progress on a piece of writing, he would venture into the basement and hit the bag around barefisted. The resulting swelling knuckles, the twisting of his left wrist, made him abandon the punching bag. It then collected dust, grew mold, and maybe saw a little action when the boys were feeling up to it. Eastman’s body further receded into old age. If you didn’t use those limbs, they would abuse you. It was more than likely, were he to shadow some soldiers in Vietnam, he would be injured on a routine hike. An ankle sprain, a dislocated something. Were he to witness combat, Lord have mercy. He would perish. It was a dangerous mission, indeed, and he was willing to risk his life, all of it, to get Penny back.
Her lover, his phantom. Had he scared the bastard off? For now. But Penny was probably already on the phone with him explaining that it was over with her husband and that he shouldn’t worry. Well, it just so happened that Eastman had an excellent memory when it came to minute details, and he had been able to commit to memory the license plate of his phantom as he drove off backward. New York plates. He figured Upper West Side or the Village. There was just something bohemian about him, apart from the mustache. He wore the brown coat of an assistant professor. Of course, he could have pushed Penny for the man’s name, but he didn’t want to go deeper into the hole with her. He knew she didn’t think it important that he know the identity of her new dick, and Eastman would keep her thinking that way. He had other means of getting the information.
Eastman Was Here Page 9
