I'll Get There. It Better Be Worth the Trip.: 40th Anniversary Edition

by John Donovan

  Mother says she's asked in one or two friends to meet me and that of course Aunt Louise and Uncle Bert will stay too. Aunt Louise says sure, and they go off in their Chrysler to find a hotel to live in for the night. Mother tells them to stay at the Chelsea. It's only a few blocks away, and she says it is fabulous. It's filled with writers and painters, and a man on the top floor keeps a lot of giant snakes in an apartment he has there. Aunt Louise's shoulders rise up to around her ears on that one, and she gives Mother her "Oh, Helen" look.

  "Really, darling," Mother says, "it's absolutely marvey. It has rooms large enough to divide by six, and still there'd be space enough for everyone. It's where Dylan Thomas used to live when he was in New York. Arthur Miller stays there too. Thomas Wolfe lived there. If I were from someplace else, I'd want to stay there."

  Uncle Bert asks if the Statler isn't nearby, and Mother gives him one of her laughs for people out of touch with the Chelsea Hotel. She says that what used to be the Statler is indeed nearby and they can get a room there if they want to, but what is the point of being in New York if they stay in a hotel just like any old hotel they might find in Boston.

  With Aunt Louise and Uncle Bert out hotel-hunting, Mother asks if she can't help me unpack. We open up my two suitcases and four cartons with all my junk in them. She's great, taking my stuff out of the suitcases. She says that I have good-looking suits, but how come I have only two? I tell her two suits are plenty, and she says that I'll have to get some more because this school she has got me enrolled in has a requirement about how people have to dress. She folds up all my shirts and my underwear so they will fit in the skinny drawers in the chest she got made for my room.

  The funny thing about it is that she keeps telling me what she's doing. She says Oh, another shirt; this is a blue one; isn't it nice and fresh? Let's shake it out and fold it long and narrow. Oh, here's a lovely tattersall shirt; isn't that nice? Is that the one I gave you for Christmas? It hasn't been worn yet. And then she yells a little. I've stuck my finger on one of the pins, she says, and then she laughs and says What the hell, I'm not going to take out all the pins just to put it in your drawer. Here, she says, you take care of this one. Why haven't you worn it yet? I tell her that I just opened the Christmas box two days ago, and she says, Of course, and was I saving the shirt for later? I say Yes. She asks do I like it? Sure, I say. You mean that, sweetheart? Sure. You wouldn't put your mother on, would you? No, I say. Did you like it as well as anything you got for Christmas? Well, I say, I don't know. You gave me some other stuff too. She says that's right. What other things that she gave me did I like? I tell her I like the stopwatch I asked for and which she gave me. She says what do I need a stopwatch for? I tell her about my running and how I was probably the fastest runner in my class at home. And I tell her about the relay teams I have been captain of for the last three years and how they have won all the races for my age group ever since I've been the captain. She thinks that is wonderful.

  "Have you really, darling?" she asks.

  "Sure," I say.

  "I didn't know an Olympic athlete would be moving in with me!" she says. But when she says it, I know it's phony. She doesn't care about the relay races in the same way Grandmother did. There's nothing I can put my finger on, but I think for a minute that my mother is getting a big laugh out of me. I guess relay races don't mean anything when you aren't running in them, but when you have been the captain of a winning team for three years, as I was, and when the team had a couple of fat guys on it who weren't good runners but who worked to be better runners than other fat guys and became pretty good runners anyway in spite of being fat, you don't want somebody to make fun of the team. When I was living with Grandmother, she used to come to all the track meets I was in. She always told me that it was better to be part of a winning team than to win all by myself. I think she was just trying to make me feel OK because I could never win the hundred-yard dash or the pole vault or anything like that. I got some second- and third-place ribbons for those things though. One year I won the high jump. Grandmother told me that she was glad I had jumped higher than anyone else, but she still thought that the relay-team win was more impressive. She took me to the movies that night. It was the first time I had gone at night. I remember that night very well, because in addition to going to the movies, we had an ice-cream soda afterwards, and it was almost eleven o'clock when we got home. Fred was waiting for us at the front door, and we took him right out for his finals, but when we came back and I went upstairs to my bedroom, I discovered that Fred had been in my bed and ripped up my sheets. He didn't like Grandmother and me to leave him behind while we celebrated. If there were any parties in his house, he wanted to be part of them. From then on when we had to be out at night, poor Fred was cooped up in the kitchen, which was OK I guess because it smelled of food and was always warm. It showed me that when you make a dog like Fred part of your family, he is a full-time member, not just someone who will be around when you want him to.

  Mother and I get out about half of my stuff before her doorbell rings. That is all Fred needs. He really lets himself go when he hears the buzz. I knew he could bark, but I had never heard him wail before. I laugh.

  "My God!" says Mother. "Can't you keep the little bastard quiet?" She goes to her doorbell button and presses it. I can hear the noise of the buzzer downstairs and the sound of the front door of the house opening. But these are only dim sounds, crowding out the pounding in my head. She has called Fred a little bastard. It wasn't her friendly voice. I have heard her call people bastards a lot before, but there was nothing to it. I call people bastards all the time, not to their faces but to myself. People are coming up the stairway. I want to grab Fred and run into my room, but Fred is standing at the living-room door, barking away.

  "Stop it!" Mother yells at him.

  Fred only barks louder.

  "Davy." She turns to me. "You've got to stop him!"

  I go to Fred. "Here, Fred," I say. He keeps barking at the footsteps coming up the stairs.

  "My God, Fred," Mother yells, "will you shut up!"

  I grab Fred and pull him away from Mother's door. He only barks louder as I carry him into my room. I pull him up onto my bed with me, holding a hand over his muzzle. He can't make noise then, but he is wiggling in my arms as Mother's friends come into her living room.

  "Darling!" Mother says. "Davy's chaining down the welcoming committee in the other room!" She laughs her loud, hysterical laugh.

  "That's fabulous, darling," a lady's voice says, laughing like Mother afterward.

  "Really mad," says a man.

  My door is partly open. The guests brush their cheeks against Mother's. I do not want to go out to meet them. Fred is squirming wildly in my arms. I give him a big kiss. This makes Fred happy, and he has a fine, slurpy time licking my face.

  other's friends keep coming to her apartment for the next few days. The women always give Mother a big kiss, and Mother kisses them back, and they all call each other darling and things like that. All the men who come look like each other. When they say darling to Mother, they don't say it loud like the women. When I am introduced to them, they ask me how I am and am I enjoying New York and what grade am I in. I am glad that Fred does a lot of barking because that gives me a chance to talk about how much Fred barks and to explain that in our town it was very quiet, and that the people who came to visit our house were usually people like Aunt Louise and Uncle Bert or maybe some ladies who used to come to play bridge with my grandmother. Fred barked then too, but that was different. Then he had to protect his turf only once a week. Now he has to protect it several times a day. Mother tells me that's the way it is during the holidays, and I can see that she is ready to clobber Fred. So I take him out for a lot of long walks. There's no question of letting him off his leash now. My walks are around the blocks near Mother's. When she has a lot of people visiting her, I walk around her blocks two or three times. I think that I'll get Fred tired out and he'll go to sleep when he goes
up to Mother's apartment. He never does. He jumps all over Mother's friends and barks at every new one who comes.

  Fred also has a very hard time learning where it is all right to do his business. Before, if Fred made a mess on someone's front lawn or right in front of someone's front door, it wasn't a big catastrophe. I used to push it into the street, and there weren't any hard feelings. Not in New York. The block Mother lives on is all fixed up, like Mother's place, to look like it looked a hundred years ago. It's very pretty compared to other blocks I can see from walking Fred in the neighborhood. The trouble is that everyone on the block knows it's very pretty. They spend a lot of time yelling at me not to let Fred plop in front of their houses. Fred doesn't understand what the yelling is about, and after three days he takes a raised voice as his cue to evacuate. This is no way to make friends in a new neighborhood. I decide that the problem is not one I want to have a "heart-to-heart" with Mother about. There's no one I can talk to about it. So I tell Fred what I guess are the rules of the game here in New York. Fred, gentleman that he is, is a good listener to my three-times-a-day lecture. I guess he thinks it's lovemaking. I can see right away though that we've got a big problem on our hands.

  The fourth day I am at Mother's place sees Mother gloomier than usual at breakfast when Fred comes loping up to her chair and curls himself around her feet. She is wearing a bathrobe with light feathers around the bottom, and Fred enjoys nibbling at the hem. Mother keeps pulling it away from Fred. He thinks that's a big game, until finally she says, "This is a Christmas present, Davy! I'm not ready to turn the whole house over to Fred yet!"

  I say I'm sorry. Fred likes the feathers. They tickle him, and when she moves them away from him, he doesn't understand that she isn't playing with him. He thinks that if he likes feathers, feathers are his friends.

  "How do you know what he thinks?" Mother asks. "Dogs don't think. They just sit around and respond to every temptation they are faced with. I don't know why Mother ever got you Fred in the first place. We never had dogs when we were growing up."

  "Grandmother loved Fred too."

  "Oh, yeah?" Mother says in a loud voice. Then she stops saying anything at all and speaks softly. "Sure she did, Davy. I'm sorry, sweetheart. I shouldn't be angry with Fred. I'm not used to him yet."

  She gets up from the table and puts her arm around me.

  "Give me a kiss."

  She bends down, and I sort of kiss her. She laughs, friendly, as she can be when she wants to be. She bends down to rub Fred, who has been jumping all over her while she was kissing me.

  "Oh, that's my Fred," she says, talking goofy. "Fred, Fred, Fred. That's a good doggie."

  Fred is wagging his tail like some machine. He has decided that Mother is some big love of his life now. If he only knew what she was saying about him two minutes ago! She goes out to the kitchen to get more coffee for herself, and Fred follows her like she's Cleopatra. I can hear her making a few more goofy sounds at Fred in the kitchen. I'm pleased, I guess. But why did she say those things just a few minutes ago? I can't figure it out, and maybe I won't ever. So why bother? I pick up my plate, which is clean because I like scrambled eggs the way my mother makes them. She puts in cheese and onions and a whole lot of stuff so that they don't taste like eggs at all. The first day she did that, I let Fred lick the plate, but she said that was obscene. When I looked up the word in the dictionary, I decided that I wouldn't let Fred do that any more. Anyway, I pile a few other plates on my own to take them to the kitchen where Mother and Fred are making all that love, and I look into this mirror hanging on the wall. It's hung so that I can see out into the kitchen. I'm not looking into the mirror for any special reason, but I just happen to glance into it as I am bringing the dishes to the kitchen. I see Mother's reflection. She has this bottle of whiskey in her hands. Her eyes are closed, and I can see that she has just had a big swallow of it. I shiver, I guess. It's dumb, but I don't want her to know I have seen her in the mirror. Or I don't want her to know I have seen her at all is more to the point. I can't look away from the mirror. I want to turn away, but I want to know if she's going to have another drink out of the bottle. She raises it to her mouth and takes a big gulp. She's still talking to Fred too, and I get the impression that she's talking to Fred so friendly so that I will think what I thought, that there is some big love feast going on over the pot of coffee. She puts the bottle down with all the other bottles on her shelf and then pours coffee into her cup. I edge toward the kitchen with my plates.

  "Hi," I say as though we just saw each other for the first time today.

  "Hi, darling!" she answers. "Fred and I are going to run away to celebrate the New Year together! What would you think about that? Would you be jealous, sweetheart?" She gives me one of her big hugs.

  "Come on," I say. "I'm going to break your dishes if you hug me." She smells like she does when she kisses me good-night.

  She takes the dishes from my hands and puts them into her metal sink. "Dishes, dishes, dishes," she says. "What are dishes?"

  Fred is sitting up on his hind legs now, begging for who knows what.

  "Fred wants you to hug him," I say.

  Mother makes the nutty noises people make to dogs when they guess they are talking to them. It's not exactly goochy-goo, but close to it. She does bend down to Fred and lets him give her a few big licks. I'm the real stiff in the picture, I conclude. So what if Mother wants whiskey in the morning? It's none of my business. Fred likes to give her licks regardless of what she drinks. Fred probably has more sense than I have. Right? Who's to say?

  I tell Mother that I'd better take Fred out for a walk. "Didn't you take him before breakfast?" she asks.

  "Yes," I say.

  "He doesn't have to go out twenty times a day, Davy."

  "Sure. I know that."

  "Then why are you forever running down the stairs with him?"

  "I don't know. He likes it, I think," I answer. "He likes to go out and sniff around. You know."

  "As a matter of fact, I don't know." She says this with her snotty voice, the one I hate the most.

  "It's that it's new for him, Mother. He likes to sniff around. That's all. And I'm not going to be able to take him out so much next week when I'm in school."

  "You always seem to be going out or coming in with Fred, Davy. Aren't you two ever just going to stay?" Mother's voice cracks a bit when she says this, so I say sure we're going to stay. She understands that this is a new place for both of us, right? Maybe it takes us a little time to go out and come in at the right time, but we'll learn. Is that OK?

  She says sure it's OK, and she's sorry that she sounds like a nag, and one of the biggest and most important things in her life is that she shouldn't sound like a nag, and more important that she shouldn't be a nag, and do I understand the difference?

  I say sure I understand the difference. And I hope I didn't make her feel that I thought she was a nag. If I did, I'm sorry.

  "Oh, no!" she says. "Davy, sweetheart, there's nothing to be sorry about. Oh, sweetheart, Mother wants most of all to have a lovely home for her baby. You understand that, don't you?"

  I tell her sure I do. She gives me another one of her hugs, and I'm sorry, I want to get out of it. My stomach turns over inside, I think, and I pull away from Mother. Does she know it!

  "There's something wrong with you animal lovers," she says very loud. "You think you're better than the rest of us. I'll tell you something, Davy sweetheart, animals are from hunger! Don't forget it!"

  I look at Mother for a minute. She's nuts, I guess. I want to go back to my real home. I want this to be a short vacation, over on New Year's Day.

  "I'm going to take Fred out," I say abruptly. "Come on, Fred." Fred's ready to go in half a second. I get my coat and go to Mother's front door.

  "Take your damned dog out," she says. "Have yourself a damned good time. Stay out the whole damned day if you wish. Forget about your damned mother, Davy!"

  I open the door and Fred rac
es out into Mother's hallway. I run after him and the door slams shut. Oh, God, I think to myself.

  "Oh, God," I hear Mother saying on the other side of the door.

  wo days later is the day before New Year's, and it's been arranged that my father will pick me up in the morning and we'll spend the day together. The doorbell rings around eleven, and Fred, old symphony orchestra that he is, howls a greeting to my father. My mother works the buzzer to let him in, and as he comes up the stairway Fred is crazier than ever. For the first time, Mother doesn't go berserk. I can see from the smile on her face that she's glad Fred is giving hell to my father. I don't anticipate that this will be a very cheery meeting, so I get out my overcoat, ready to put it on in half a second.

  "Happy New Year, David," Mother says to my father after she has let him in.

  Father tells her the same thing and then gives me a sort of kiss, not really a kiss, but he puts his arms around me and puts his face next to mine. I guess I'm awkward and don't know what to do.

  "Hi," I say.

  He says hi too and tells me Happy New Year as well. Fred is screaming at his heels, so he bends down in a second and Fred licks his hand.

  "Hi, Fred," my father says. I'm pleased that he calls Fred by his name and my face shows it. My father says, "Fred and I are old friends, aren't we, Fred? You remember, Davy, I met Fred at your grandmother's."

  "Oh, sure," I say. I remember that was one of the times I left Fred alone with Grandmother for a week, when my father took me on a trip. Grandmother told me that Fred wouldn't eat for two days after I went away. I don't think I was very hungry either.