by David Guy
Jake had done his real training in Japan. Nothing else seemed quite right after that. He wound up in Maine, as far from California as he could get.
“I should have brought you along more slowly,” he said, “had you giving talks. Splitting them, at least.”
“Your students didn’t want that.”
“Who cares what they wanted? It’s a matter of what they need. Now there’s no time.”
We’d made it to Harvard Street, one of my favorites in all of Cambridge, shady and peaceful, big houses on a little hill back from the street. The leaves were just starting to turn.
“You want this last cookie?” Jake said.
“You’re offering me your last cookie?” Greater love hath no man.
“I thought you needed one. You didn’t take any.” Incomprehensible to Jake.
“I’m fine, really.”
He popped it into his mouth.
“You’ll have to develop on your own,” he said after a while. “But you have a teaching sense. You started that way.”
High school social studies, years ago.
“And don’t underestimate Madeleine. Even the Buddha had wealthy patrons. Buddhism would be nowhere in this country if people hadn’t paid the bills.”
“Is she your girlfriend?”
The question just popped out on me. It had been percolating since we’d left.
He burst into laughter. “At my age?”
“Was she ever?”
He heaved a big sigh.
“I’ve always wondered,” I said.
He shrugged. “How much time do we have?”
“Twenty minutes.”
“Let’s walk down here.”
He liked the shady sidewalks of Harvard Street too.
“When you do this kind of work, you’re getting to a deep place in people. Every human being’s got it, even the ones who don’t last in practice. They just can’t face it.”
“Right.”
“It’s the same in various endeavors. Art school. Writing. Probably politics, some way I don’t get. People get engaged with that deep energy. Spiritual. Sexual. It’s all the same down there.”
“I don’t know about politics.”
“Maybe not. But people confuse the teaching with the teacher. Think you’re wonderful because you give them a glimpse of the dharma. What’s wonderful is the dharma.”
“Yes.”
“The women all think they want in your pants. That’s what it comes down to.”
Maybe I did want to be a teacher.
“A doddering old man with heart problems and Alzheimer’s. It’s ridiculous.”
“You don’t have Alzheimer’s.”
“I don’t know what the hell you’d call it. That is the name, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought I forgot even that.” He shook his head. “Anyway, some guys take advantage of this. You’ve heard the stories.”
“Sure.”
“I’m not telling you what to do. You can be one of them. You’ve got a history with this.”
I did.
“And it ruins the whole thing. You become the boyfriend and the teacher flies out the window.”
Maybe I should take up cookies.
“Those guys all did it, of course,” I said. “The ones in the stories.”
“They were kidding themselves if they thought they were teaching.”
He had never made that statement so strongly. It sounded like his last word on the subject.
“I’m not saying don’t have sex. Just don’t mix it with teaching.”
We had made it to Prospect and were walking to Mass. Ave., cars all jammed up, fighting to get around each other. The peaceful stretch of our walk was over.
“I never touched Madeleine,” he said. “She’s been all over me as long as I’ve known her. It’s important to her, that lovey-dovey stuff. Doesn’t matter how much money the woman has. Emotionally, she’s a street person.”
We had made it to the corner of Mass. Ave., speaking of street people. He was going one way, I the other.
“I don’t think I put up with it for the money,” he said. “I’ve wondered.”
“You didn’t.”
He’d have done the same for a suicidal poor person.
“I’ve turned down more than I’ve taken.”
I did wonder how much he’d taken. The money lecture was for another time.
“Are you going to be all right,” I asked, “alone?”
“We’ve got a two-block radius here.”
The Y was almost in front of the bookstore. Plenty of restaurants around.
“If I disappear, check the bakeries first.”
He would never take this seriously.
“If you never touched Madeleine,” I said, “how do you know all this?”
“There was somebody I did touch. I’ve been wanting to tell you. If there’s time.”
“We’ve had twenty-two years.”
“It hasn’t been right until now.” An enigmatic statement if there ever was one. “Probably I’ll survive the afternoon. Say hello to the boy.”
He was a man. Nearly middle-aged. “I will. Take care of yourself.”
The old man was just joking, but every time I left, I wondered if it was the last time.
I could have taken the subway into Boston, had done it plenty of times, but I preferred to walk, past MIT and over the bridge into town. It was exhilarating walking over the water, the wind blowing like crazy; you saw joggers, rollerbladers, bikers, old guys getting out, students trudging under backpacks, old ladies with shopping bags. The whole world came at you over that bridge.
Every one of them a Buddha, according to the teaching. Ponder that.
Josh’s passionate interests, as with few people I knew, had turned into a career. He had always liked movies—what kid didn’t?—and his early years were fruitful: Star Wars alone was a major obsession. When his mother and I split up, he was twelve; he stayed with me on Sundays, and the one thing we did every week was go to a movie.
Partly I just didn’t know what else to do, suddenly a single parent; partly it had always been our favorite thing, and his mother never approved, thinking we should be out walking the Appalachian Trail or something; partly it was just that the Sunday second matinee was a great time to go. We ate dinner out afterward, talked about what we’d seen. It was my favorite moment in the week.
The occasion became legendary among our friends. “What’s the movie today?” they said if they saw us in the morning. Sometimes they asked to come, but a certain kind of critical mind didn’t make it. Josh was the only human being I’d ever known who shared my rock-bottom conviction: any movie was better than no movie. We were sometimes disappointed, but never sorry we’d gone. After a real dog we’d come out laughing.
Siskel and Ebert were syndicated on Sunday evening, and we watched that too. Josh began keeping a log, which he typed up and gave to friends. When I moved to Mount Desert he came for the summer, and there was a theater in Bar Harbor that showed a different movie every night. A couple of summers we went to every single one. We went late the nights of my class with Jake. The same movie showed on Saturdays and Sundays, and sometimes we went twice. It was disgraceful.
But now he was one of the best known reviewers in the country. The Globe gave him space, and he could use it any way he wanted, give the whole column to one movie, split it up among five. He wrote in a wild idiomatic style that I, for one, found superb. He had the same love for movies he’d had when he was twelve.
Josh picked the kind of restaurant I never go to, one of those big city places, high ceilings full of the roar of conversation and clatter of plates, white cloths on the tables and good silverware, waiters dashing around with big trays. Deals were closing all over the room. He was waiting for me when I got there, or so the hostess said; it was like picking my way through a maze, finding the table.
But he looked great. He’s six feet, two inches tall, half a foot taller
than I am—his mother is tall—and though he started as a skinny, gawky kid, he’s filled out as he’s gotten older. He also has his mother’s reddish hair; his is curly, and he lets it grow into a near-Afro, quite distinctive. He wears pale-framed glasses, always dresses well, today in a light sport jacket, starched shirt, jeans. The man has style. He stood to hug me in that booming, bustling restaurant. It’s always great to see him.
Especially when we’re seated, he towers over me.
“You walked down?” he asked.
“I did. Our old walk.” In the old days, when we went to Mount Desert, we would stay in Cambridge a few days and often took that walk.
“Is this,” he asked, “as my friends would say, a ‘woman’s lunch,’ or a man’s?”
“What’s a ‘woman’s lunch’?”
“We have wine. A glass of Chardonnay. Men have a drink.”
“Does beer qualify?”
“You’re a man. We’ll call you a man.”
He had a bourbon and water, small glass. I had a Sam Adams. We were in Boston.
We gave some attention to the menu. Stiff prices at this place. I was glad it was his turn.
“Going to the movies today?” I asked. What a question. When didn’t he?
“One of those kid flicks. Some kid’s acting weird, turns out he has special powers. He can see the dead, talk to the devil, some fucking thing. Pretty soon his parents are swelling up like bullfrogs, the house is imploding. I’ve seen it a million times. The bane of my existence.”
“Any movie is better than no movie.”
“We may have to alter that principle, honest to God.” He closed his menu. “You could come.”
“I have to watch the old man. I’ll take a rain check.”
“How is he?”
“Not great. Hard to tell, actually. He hides it. Cheerful as ever.”
Josh had come up a couple of times during the summer, noticed Jake’s absent air around the shop.
“He could fall into a shit heap and smell like roses,” I said. I’d never seen anything like it.
“I just realized the other day,” I said, “I’m the age he was when I met him.”
“He looked older.”
“Bald guys do. You’re the age I was.”
“Holy shit. It’s scary.”
Our drinks arrived and we ordered. Lamb chops for him—ah to be young—a salad and crab cake appetizer for me. Maybe this was a woman’s lunch.
“How’s Carol?” I said.
“It’s Mitzi, Dad. Carol was before.”
“Jesus, that’s right. Maybe I’m the one with Alzheimer’s. How’s Mitzi?”
It was hard to keep them straight.
“So so. You know how it goes.”
If the biggest influence on a man’s life is the unlived life of his father—it makes sense when you think of it—Josh was living the life I’d always wanted, or thought I did. One woman after another. No thought of marrying. Several had moved in for a while, never too long. They kept getting younger. At least in comparison to him.
I was married right out of college, Josh born right away. I wanted that too, of course, and it was partly just the time, war raging all around us, me looking for a little stability. It was a different choice.
Josh had always seemed confident in his.
He took up his drink. “Something’s wrong,” he said.
“With Mitzi?”
“No. Mitzi’s okay. She’s just Mitzi.” He looked into his glass, sipped. “Mitzi’s not going to last.”
I could have told him that. If I’d remembered her name.
“It’s just something wrong. Not a catastrophe. Not dire. It’s vague. Like what I just said about that movie. It’s a bad season. Or I’m not writing well.”
“I read you every week. Seems fine.”
“Have you seen the blog?”
“Sometimes. It’s not like the reviews. Blogs aren’t the same.” One thing I didn’t understand about this generation was why they published every word they wrote. We kept journals and left them in a drawer. People lived their lives so publicly these days.
I was the man’s father, of course, but I’d have said if I thought he was slipping.
“That’s what’s so weird,” he said. “The movie season really isn’t worse. I seem to write as well as ever, though it takes longer. Mitzi’s like the other girls. Better than a lot.”
He killed his drink. Our lunch was arriving.
“But something’s wrong,” he said.
The waiter served. We declined second drinks. I was having both of my dishes together. Josh began to pick at his.
It was crashingly obvious what was wrong. I just didn’t know how to say it.
“Roger Ebert,” he said. “How does he do it? All these years later.”
“I wonder if he does.”
“Still seems good to me.”
The eternal human question. How will this all turn out? How will it be when I’m . . . whatever. It always makes us unhappy. And we always ask it. That’s what the Buddha noticed. We can’t let the moment be.
The problem was that I couldn’t help him. A father is a model—often of what not to do—but can’t be a mentor. He has to stand by helplessly, hoping someone will step in.
“You’re at that time of life,” I said. “Lost in a dark wood. Read Dante.”
“I saw the movie.”
“They made a movie of that?”
“It’s a joke, Dad. Around the office.”
I get it. Movie critic jokes.
“It’s not a bad thing,” I said. “You’re in a dark wood. Stay there a while.”
“It doesn’t feel good.”
“No.” And a father hates to see his son suffer. The Buddha’s father was a case in point. “But it’s a mistake to get out too fast. To fake it.”
That’s what everybody does. Runs out of the cave before they find the mystery. The cave’s their one chance.
“Are you seeing a shrink?” I asked.
“I’ve been thinking about it. Mitzi says I should.” He shrugged. “So I’ll decide to marry her.”
I wished I could remember what Mitzi looked like. I think I was picturing Carol.
“I think you should too,” I said.
He looked up.
“See somebody, that is. Mitzi’s right. Somebody older.” While you’re at it, find somebody older than Mitzi.
“You’ve got to figure out what the next thing is,” I said. “There is a next thing. You’ve got to find it. But you don’t want to grab too fast. You let it emerge.” I had to shut my mouth. I’d already said too much. What I suspected—but would never have said—was that he needed to write a screenplay. Talk about the scary unknown. California here I come.
“I won’t mention what I did at your age.”
“Jesus. I hope it’s not that.”
“It’s not. I’m sure.” You never do what your father did.
“I’m worried about you,” he said. “That’s part of it.”
“Don’t be,” I said.
“How can I not? What’s going to happen?”
That question again. What must he have imagined, his old derelict Zen monk father moving in, sleeping on a mat in the corner, waking every morning to chant and do prostrations, shaving his head weekly, living on rice and pickled radishes, walking the city streets with a begging bowl?
I told him about the center, told him the way Madeleine had fixed up the house, the bedrooms upstairs, the future office, plans for the third floor. I said these things despite the fact that I hadn’t known about them four hours before. Also despite the fact that—in my best guess—they required Jake’s sane presence on the earth for at least another eight or nine months. They also required his moving from Maine, something I couldn’t quite picture. There were lots of ifs.
“What if Jake doesn’t make it?” Josh saw one of them.
“He wants me to do it anyway.”
“Do you want that?”
Good que
stion. This was all so sudden. I knew how Josh felt when he sat down with Mitzi.
“I’m deciding,” I said.
It was another of those moments when you sit in the cave.
6
I MET JAKE the summer Josh and I first went to Mount Desert Island. Josh’s mother and I had separated the winter before, and it was important that we go on vacation, but I thought it would be unbearable to go to the North Carolina beaches we’d always gone to. We’d do the same old things, be constantly reminded of the person who wasn’t there. We were still wounded and shaky.
A New York friend of mine named Cheryl owned a small house on Mount Desert Island and rented it out during the tourist season; she thought it a perfect place for a new vacation. The ocean up there was too cold for swimming in June, but there were beautiful lakes for canoeing, a miniature golf course and a go-cart track, a beautiful national park for hiking and biking; the town of Bar Harbor was full of superb restaurants and quaint shops. Cheryl herself went up there every summer with whoever her current boyfriend was. She always had a wonderful time.
The first mistake I made—in a summer that would be full of them—was thinking of New England as a small enclave; we’d fly into Boston and drive up to Mount Desert, no problem. Actually it’s quite a distance—as any fool who looks at a map can tell—and a travel agent put us on a puddle jumper to Portland, had us rent a car there. We still had a decent drive ahead of us, and it was late and pitch black when we got to the island. We were picking up the key from somebody’s mailbox, finding the house with directions that were perfect in daylight but a little tricky at night. I’m talking no streetlights, most of the houses closed and dark. I wasn’t sure I had the right place until the key fit.
What a relief, after an endless day of travel, finally to have found our house. We could relax.
Except that there was nothing to do.
I had heard Cheryl describe long blessed days of quiet and solitude in her Mount Desert cottage. She once sent a list of the fifteen books she had read during a two-week vacation. She spoke of a protected back porch where she could sunbathe nude, long afternoons of marvelous sex with the current boyfriend, evenings with wine and a lobster from a lobster shack. She did mention that there was no television or stereo in the house, just an AM radio. There wasn’t even a phone. I hadn’t taken all that in.
