Lapham Rising

by Roger Rosenblatt

  Fate saw to it that I was seated between the woman with the cause and the pill (female). The first, on my left, addressed me at once. “I do hope you’re doing something for the wheels,” she said. She was a handsome old bat, with eyes like coagulated sapphires, and a face wrapped tight about the skull. Her stare was so penetrating, I thought she was blind.

  “Something for the wheels?” I asked.

  “Yes. They’re in very bad shape. A man in your position could do a great deal for them.”

  “What trouble are the wheels in?”

  “Dire. Dire,” she said. “In fifty years, perhaps less, there will be no wheels left. What do you think of that?”

  “I think the world will be stationary.”

  “Well! That doesn’t make any sense whatever. Either take the problem seriously, or not at all!” The agreeable man concurred with her. The surprised people were surprised.

  “And what do you do?” asked the pill to my right. She looked like the second Mrs. Humbert Humbert, lurid and nuts, with the sort of poise that readily transmogrifies into belligerence. I pictured pink cozies on her toilets. When she spoke, she bobbed and weaved like a bantamweight.

  “I’m a writer,” I answered.

  “Would I have read anything you’ve written?”

  “That depends. I’d have to have some idea of what you read.”

  “Well, I may have read something you wrote without knowing you wrote it.”

  “That’s sensible but unhelpful,” I said, “since I still have no way of knowing your reading habits.”

  “I was only trying to make pleasant conversation.” She spun huffily toward the Englishman, who said something about how exciting it was to hear Americans quarrel, because we’re so free.

  A sputter of shouting outside distracted me from the festivities. I heard someone yelling at Jack to hurry up and park his car already because he was late to the dinner. For his part, Jack was explaining as courteously as he could that the cars had to be moved in order of their arrival. But the guest was late, after all, so he had to take it out on a thirteen-year-old boy.

  Just then, from the other side of the table, the psychiatrist said to me, “I know you. You wrote that novel about the man who hid out and lived in a rare-book store.” He had the pasty, piggy face of a Williams graduate I once met in the 1960s, and he scrutinized my being as if he had just picked me out of a police lineup. “I hope you don’t mind my saying so, but I thought it was silly.”

  “Why would I mind a thing like that?”

  “I mean, it was unrealistic. How could someone live in a bookstore without being caught?”

  “It was supposed to be metaphorical,” I said. I don’t know why.

  “Metaphorical for what?”

  “For a mind that wanted to live in the past.”

  “There you go,” he announced to the entire table. “Silly.”

  “Maybe you’ll like my new novel better,” I suggested. “It’s about a fat, pale Williams graduate who eats tapioca for a year until he explodes.”

  “Are you being funny?” Pasty was turning maroon.

  “Not in the least. And the story is not metaphorical either. It really happened. Or soon will.”

  Before he could say anything else, Mrs. Bitterman stood and clinked her Waterford crystal goblet with her demitasse spoon. “It’s so nice to have all our crowd together under one roof,” she said. “As Yeats wrote, ‘…that I had such friends.’ Now I should like to propose a toast to my fabulously talented husband, who has just finished his book on the life of Louella Parsons. It’s called Poop. And I will tell you, it is absolutely fabulous!” Mr. Bitterman waved off the prearranged flattery from his seat. The applause crinkled like cellophane.

  The news of Bitterman’s achievement had hardly settled over the tingly room when a woman at another table stood and clinked her glass. This one had always interested me. Naturally gifted in malice and deceit, she never had to choose between betraying her friends and betraying her country. She had an announcement to make, about herself: “Yes, I know. You were wondering, ‘Will she ever get it done?’ The answer is a resounding yes, as of three o’clock this afternoon! At three o’clock today, Winner: The History of the Pulitzer Prizes hopped from my screen to my printer and thence to the publisher!” Cries of “Oh!” competed with cries of “Hurray!,” with cries of “Hurray!” coming out on top.

  As if all this were not enough to hurl “our crowd” into a never-ending saturnalia, a magazine writer and his wife then shot to their four feet to say that they too had finished not one but two books that very day. Their faces, a pair of andirons, were softened by the couple’s identical robin’s-egg-blue seersucker jackets. Each had written a biography of the other, and the volumes were to be released as a twinned, boxed pair titled He Writes and She Writes.

  “That is fantastic!”

  “Marvelous!”

  “Brilliant!”

  “Hurray!”

  “Hear! Hear!” from the Englishman.

  Dickie Weeke, “the adman with clout,” a galoot with a mind like a dead battery, went so far as to say he intended to buy a hundred copies of the set’s first printing. Chip (Chip) Cheroo, the cultural critic whose ingenuity in the torture of prose was not to be laughed at, thundered “Ditto!” And Bobo de Pleasure, the “conservative columnist with a liberal flair,” whose own popular Let’s Get Ahead by Agreeing with All Sides! had just been reissued, said, “I agree with all sides.” Everyone howled.

  There soon followed a chorus from each of the tables, consisting of the word great. Everything spoken of was great. People who looked great were great and were doing great things. They also were about to embark on new projects that were in themselves great. At this point I decided to down my second glass of the Jefferson Margaux, which, though it had no taste, nonetheless packed a punch. Just as I was dunking a tournedos into my paella, I caught sight of Chloe at the table for the Perfects. She was giving me the fish eye, as if expecting trouble. Then she turned to Mrs. Bitterman, who was mouthing the word great.

  After the choir of greatness came a cascade of monologues on topics including the local traffic, the local vegetable and fruit produce, the work one was having done on one’s kitchen by locals, and the surprising quality of the local theater. The monologues were followed by laughter, which came in ripples, snorts, hiccups, grunts, gurgles, heehaws, and whinnies. This preceded much chattering and happy screaming, followed by more monologues, followed by whooping and whispering, then tweets and twangs, then nuzzles and side splits, then by more monologues and a moist, ripe belch.

  Just when I thought things could not get any more delightful, Mr. Bitterman had a “great idea.” Everyone at every table was to stand and tell the others what new great thing he or she was up to.

  Vandersnook reported that his likeness was about to appear on a two-cent stamp in Barbados. He said the Barbadian government had originally offered the one-cent, but he had held out and refused to accept anything under two. Everybody clapped and expressed awe at his courage.

  Eely Moray, the TV host, was also seated at the Perfect table. A former door-to-door Bible salesman, he wore a red blazer with brass buttons, a boutonniere, and money-green slacks. Eely told the throng that he was giving up television to found his own church based on the teachings of Joseph Campbell. Those who did not comment on how timely his decision was, said it was the bravest thing they had ever heard.

  Ben Brio, the garden critic with orchidaceous hair, to whom every weed was a flower and every flower a weed, stood next to deliver the long-awaited news that he had resolved to pull together a collection of his petunia reviews under the title Brio. Many guests thought it a daring step. He took the opportunity to thank all the assembled for their too-kind remarks on his first collection, Luminous.

  Yet more forthcoming books were announced. Truss Inert, the public-relations guru, was hard at work on a groundbreaking study to be called In Defense of Plagiarists. This too was regarded as brave. Mack Flec
knoe, the fleshy Welsh historian, stood to present his latest, Harrison: The Only President Without a Hagiography. Parkyer Carsir, the gossip publisher, was just getting started on a memoir whose working title was Will I Ever Get a Seat at the Table? In response, Mr. Bitterman rose to say, “Well, you’ll always have a seat at our table, Parkyer.” Others chimed in, “You bet!” I recognized Carsir’s voice as the one I had heard earlier outside, browbeating Jack.

  So it went, round and round. One person said he was planning to take a trip to Belgium in the fall; another was thinking about changing her name to Penny; a third had just become a vegan. All announcements were greeted with equally high enthusiasm. For some reason, the old bat with a cause at my table brought down the house when she said that her effort to protect wheels worldwide had to date raised ten million dollars in donations. And Mr. Jefferson apologized for his wine again, but everyone said it was great anyway.

  By now I had guzzled my third glass and was feeling dizzy and queasy to the point of full-blown sickness. The wide-board floors began to morph into the ground level of an abattoir, where bulls and cows and a calf or two were seated at round tables mooing and moaning and kicking up small clouds of dust with their hooves. Smoke plumed from their wide nostrils, which were dilated with fear. Their eyes were bloodshot. I wanted to save the creatures from the farmer in charge of the abattoir, who, scythe in hand, was about to run amok among the animals and slice them to ribbons. But two things stood in my way: I was smashed. And I was the farmer.

  Then finally it was my turn to speak. I gulped down my fourth Margaux and decided that I would be more visible and more effective if I stood on the table. In my upward climb I stepped on Pill’s wrist and kicked a thick wedge of Key lime pie into the lap of Pasty Williams. Then I told our crowd what I was up to.

  “This evening,” I said, “this very evening, I am going home to give myself an enema. And it will be great.”

  Not waiting for the applause, I began to sing, “The Greatest Love of All,” gesticulating lavishly in an attempt to get others to join in. Only Mr. Jefferson’s new bride obliged. She sang quite well.

  To divert attention from me, Mrs. Bitterman hurriedly summoned the cook from the kitchen to receive the plaudits of the guests for preparing such a great dinner. The poor woman blinked furiously as she entered the room, looking like a prisoner who had just been released from solitary confinement into the light. She was tobacco-colored, with glossy brown hair and a very pretty, if terrified, face. To divert attention from her, I jumped down from the table, grabbed the male Bitterman, and gave him a long, hard kiss on the mouth. Two kisses, actually: “One for the surf, and one for the turf!”

  Chloe rose from her chair like a sergeant reporting for duty. “That’s it,” she said. “We’re going home.” As she pushed me toward the door, the Bittermans assured her that everyone understood how I was, and that she mustn’t worry about my spoiling the party, and that she, for one, would be welcome in their home at any time, night or day. On our way out, I heard two “Isn’t he awful?”s and one “Beyond the pale.”

  In the driveway, I told Jack the party had been all he’d said it would be, and I gave him a twenty-dollar bill. Chloe said nothing on the ride back to Noman. I said nothing myself, as I was trying to work out a matter that had been troubling me all night.

  At last we pulled up at the creek. “You just have to do it, don’t you?” she said. “You have to spout off.”

  “That’s it!” I said. “Whales! She was talking about saving the whales!” Then I heaved up the Margaux, the surf and the turf, mostly on Chloe, I’m afraid.

  Not long afterward, she announced her departure from our household. Something about a last straw.

  Ten

  At 2:34, the sun no longer equivocates, and has dulled to the color of grade-school glue. The clouds gloom over in the preliminary stages of a rampart, and the day takes on the bleak appeal of a mule, part solemn, part mule. It is a hue I am generally fond of, but now I consider how the inevitable rainstorm may affect the operation of the Da Vinci. Yet it must have rained in the fourth century B.C. too, don’t you think? And it’s a stolid machine, much more substantial, more structurally austere, than I had ever imagined. When I seek to admire it, it looks away as if to say: You made me, now lay off.

  In truth, I had no idea how big and heavy the parts would be, not that the bulk would have deterred me. Sir Ralph’s plans, which saw the Da Vinci as a toy involving a Ping-Pong ball, gave specifications in inches. I, possessing a different and grander vision, transposed Sir Ralph’s measurements into feet, including the ballistic calculations, which were originally drawn up in meters. The three FedEx packages contained everything from the hinged catch and the winding roller to the massive plates, all ten to twelve times the recommended size.

  “Señor Moment!” The bullhorn amplifies every word into a threat. “A question, señor.”

  “No, José, it isn’t Cinco de Mayo yet. But soon. Nine months. You can start preparing the explosives.”

  “Tell me, Señor. What does that H stand for on your horn?”

  “It stands for José.”

  I go to the dock and crawl under the tarp. I am way ahead of schedule. Except for setting and attaching the torsion spring, the project is down to a very few minor touches. I check the ropes. I check the wheels, the mortises for the uprights, the winch crossbar, the mallet, the leg of the catch. I check the pine ball in the tub.

  Now to the hill, zip in my stride, ready at last to hook up the horsehair. I feel a surge of satisfaction grading into calm. A shudder of the kind of joy I experienced once in a rare while when I still was writing. What the piano player feels—what Blossom Dearie feels accompanying herself when her voice and fingers meet where they are supposed to—“Is you is or is you ain’t my baby?” What the carpenter feels—even the carpenters working on Lapham’s—when tongue-and-groove groove. Not pride, exactly. More like control. Veni, vidi, vici. Conception, preparation, execution. For one bright-eyed, evanescent moment, control of one’s work and of one’s art and of one’s life.

  “I placed a jar in Tennessee, /And round it was upon a hill, / It made the slovenly wilderness…” What the fuck?

  WHAT THE FUCK?

  Merely telling you that the Mason jar lies empty on its side, with the horsehair gone, all of it gone, cannot begin to convey my horror and panic at this moment. Neither do I need to ponder the calamity, to attribute it to an accident, or to some natural disaster, or to voodoo, or to divine intervention in the hubris of mortals. Nothing is divine about this theft.

  “Hector!”

  “What?!” he asks with false innocence, running back to the dock. I go after him.

  “What did you do with it?” I loom over him, as if that mattered.

  “With what?”

  I know he’s lying. “The horsehair. Where did you put it?”

  He tries to salute. “We have a situation here, General. I’ll call the War Room.”

  “Where is it, dammit?”

  “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? A grown man stomping around searching for the hair of a horse? Wouldn’t you much prefer the hair of the dog?” I hate it when he chortles.

  “Cough it up,” I tell him.

  “I’m not a cat.”

  “You didn’t eat it! Tell me you didn’t eat it.”

  “I didn’t eat it.”

  I stare at him. “You did. You did eat it. Horsehair. Why?”

  “Well, for one thing, I’ll eat anything, as you surely are aware by now. But if you must know, I’m trying to save you from yourself. What you have in mind will mess up everything for both of us. It’s true, I do think we could do a lot better around here, but all in all I happen to like my life the way it is. I’m a conservative, remember.”

  “How’d you do it?” I ask him, stifling a rage.

  “Do what?”

  “Get into the jar. How’d you unscrew the top?”

  “I prayed it open.” He chuckles again.

&
nbsp; If a dropkick would bring back the horsehair, he would be dog-paddling in the creek right now. Now that he’s mentioned it, though, perhaps I could use the hair of this dog in place of the horse’s. I’d gladly try, but his hair would be too short. Then again, Sir Ralph’s instructions noted that when the ancients had no horsehair available, they used the tendons of any proximate animal. I look Hector over from nose to tail. He bellows, “Oh, what a friend we have in Jesus.”

  What to do? Months of effort and meticulous planning down the gullet of a cur. Bang bang bang bang bang. Is Lapham’s house laughing at me?

  The bullhorn calls again, “Señor March! We’ve been talking about you. You seem upset today. Very nervous. More than usual.”

  “Thank you for your concern, José.”

  “We theenk you need an activity. Something to keep you busy.” Several of the carpenters are looking my way, grinning and nodding in agreement. Their interest in me seems to be growing anthropological. “Maybe you should have a hobby. Maybe you need a woman, señor! But you have to improve your appearance.”

  “Is that possible?” I wave and head for the house as if I knew what I was doing.

  “You definitely need a new shirt, and new shoes. Every-theeing! Even so, we theenk it would take a very patient woman to be with you.”

  “Did you have someone in mind?” I am about to go inside.

  “We were theenking of Señora Polite.”