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

by John Donovan

  Fred knows I'm talking about him, so he ignores me. He just keeps on looking at Stephanie. He has sized her up right. When she is about half-finished with her roast beef, I can see her cutting up the rest of it into small bite-size morsels. Fred hears her too. He stands up and practically pushes Stephanie out of her seat. She takes her plate to the kitchen. If she had broken her stride into the kitchen, Fred would have bashed into her in half a second, he is so close to her. In a minute I can hear his jaws smacking together as Stephanie gives him the best part of her dinner.

  "It sounds like real love," I say to my father.

  "They make a noisy couple," my father says.

  "Just at dinner time."

  "I guess they'd be noisy if they started barking at each other too."

  "Stephanie doesn't bark," I say.

  "You don't think so?" my father says. "You should come around more often if you believe that."

  "OK. I will."

  "You can come around as often as you wish, Davy," my father says. "We want to have you with us whenever you want to be."

  Stephanie comes back into the room, followed closely by her new admirer. She says, "I wish I had had two homes in New York when I was thirteen. That's the way to look at it, Davy."

  "OK," I say. And then no one says anything. "It's OK with Fred too."

  The three of us sort of laugh. Fred has taken himself to a new position, next to my father's chair. I have the feeling that in a minute I'm going to hear my father cutting up the rest of his meat.

  hat did Stephanie have with her roast beef, Davy?" Mother asks and asks again after I tell her that she had a lot of stuff.

  "What kind of stuff?"

  "You know," I tell her, "vegetables and bread and that stuff."

  "What vegetables?"

  "I don't know. Vegetables!"

  "Did she have potatoes?"

  "I don't think so," I say. "No, she didn't. She had beans, I think."

  "Beans! What kind? Yellow? Green?"

  "Green."

  "How were they prepared?"

  And I tell my mother that I don't know how they were prepared. They were just beans. Beans are beans. What does she think I did, go out in my father's kitchen and watch Stephanie make the supper? And Mother says that all she wanted to know was if they were fresh beans or were they frozen. I tell her how do I know? She gets mad and says it's all right not to tell her anything if that's the way I want it. What did I come to New York for if it wasn't to have a good time with her and to share everything together?

  "I'm sorry, Mother. I don't know about all that stuff in the kitchen. Ask Fred. He spent most of his time out there with her."

  I think that's kind of funny, so I bend down to Fred and ask him to tell Mother what kind of beans Stephanie had with the roast beef tonight and how were they prepared? And did he see her take them out of a frozen package or did they come out of the big bean garden they have growing in the back part of my father's apartment?

  Mother doesn't think I'm such a funny fellow though. "That's all right, young man," she says. "It probably doesn't mean anything to you that I was home here alone all afternoon and that I had dinner by myself, knowing that it was important for me to give up my evening so that I would be here when you came home. The least I could have expected from you was for you to share with me what appears to have been a very pleasant day."

  "Come on, Mother," I say.

  "Don't `come on' me, Davy! You're just lucky you have a home to come home to and a loving mother waiting for you! You're just lucky..."

  She starts to go on, but I guess I look at her with surprise mapped out all over my face.

  "Oh, dear, Davy," she goes on, "I didn't mean it like it sounded. Of course you have a home. Of course I'll wait here for you. You know that, don't you, dear?"

  "Sure," I say. We look at each other without saying anything for a long time. The trouble with a New York apartment is that there isn't anyplace you can turn to to wait for something like what was happening between Mother and me to pass. Mother turns away and then back. She says she'll get a cold drink for me if I want one. Do I want one? she asks me two times, and I say No. The third time I say Yes, and she tells me she knew I did. She wants to get it for me. She wants one too.

  She messes around out there in the kitchen. I can hear two or three ice cubes hit the floor, followed by Mother's kitchen oaths. Oath time usually comes with the cocktail hour for Mother, and I guess from the way she smells and from her lively curiosity about Stephanie's dinner, Mother has been sitting around having a lot of cold drinks.

  "Dear Davy," Mother starts when she gets back in the room, "I'm sorry I sounded so harsh a minute ago. You know that I get carried away at times, don't you, dear?"

  I tell her that sure I do, and I'm sorry that I didn't answer her questions about dinner when she asked them, and that in addition to beans Stephanie had a green salad, rolls from Pepperidge Farm, and carrots with some goo on them. I tell her that they drank a bottle of wine and I had Diet Pepsi because I didn't feel like having milk. We had fancy peaches for dessert.

  Mother just says, "Oh," and that's all. The great desire to hear about the meal has dissipated itself, and we both take big swallows of our cold drinks.

  "She's big around the middle, don't you think?" Mother says.

  "Who?"

  "Stephanie, of course. She's always seemed rather bovine to me, don't you agree?"

  I ask her what she means by bovine, and she says she means that Stephanie looks like a big cow. Would I agree? I don't say anything. I think about Stephanie for a minute and remember that she rolled all over the floor with Fred. I don't think Mother would do that. I don't think.

  "Would you roll over the floor with Fred?" I ask Mother.

  "What?"

  "Would you get down there with him and roll around?"

  "I would not," Mother says. "Isn't it enough that he lives here?" She makes a big dent in her drink once again and goes back to the kitchen to fix it. "What a silly damned question," Mother calls back from the kitchen. "What on earth would I want to roll around the floor with Fred for?"

  "Oh, I don't know. I wondered if you would."

  "Davy!" Mother yells from the kitchen. "She didn't!" Mother runs back with a new drink. "Did Stephanie roll around with Fred?"

  I sort of shrug my shoulders, as noncommittal as I can be.

  "She did!" Mother goes on. "The big toadie! She rolled around with Fred just to make you think she liked him. And you fell for it!"

  Mother thinks that she's saying the funniest things in the world, and she laughs like a TV comedian laughing at his own jokes. I don't say anything, because if I said what I wanted to say, Mother would toss her drink in my face. No, she wouldn't do that. It's too precious. But she might bop me over the head with today's paper. I sit on the floor next to Fred.

  "It isn't such a big deal, getting down here with Fred," I say. "All you have to do is sit on the floor. He must get kind of sick of looking up all the time, don't you think? He probably gets a crick in the neck from looking up at people. Right, Fred? Is that the way it is?" Fred jumps up and licks my face. He moves himself around so that he plops himself solidly in place in my lap. He is the perfect adapter. His body is so long and flexible that whenever I move a muscle he is able to move one too. I lie back on the floor.

  "Get up, Davy," Mother says. "It's dirty on the floor."

  I don't say anything.

  "Davy," she says with emphasis, "I think you should get up."

  Fred has crawled up over my body and arranged himself all along my chest and below my waist, stretched out like one of those animal statues guarding an Egyptian tomb. He lowers his head so that his nose is up against my chin, and he pretends to be asleep, sure he has found a bed for the night. I close my eyes too.

  "Davy," Mother says, "I want you to get up! You understand that, don't you?"

  I don't say anything. I put my arms around Fred, and he makes a purring sound. I remember that I have told him b
efore that I think he's part cat, so I smile. I can hear Mother rush into the kitchen to get herself another drink. When she comes back, she isn't as shook up as when she left. I have opened my eyes, and we are looking at each other. It is straight now between us. I have never looked at anyone like I look at Mother, and I wonder if she has looked at anyone in this way before either.

  "Do you want me to love your Fred?" Mother asks. "Is that all there is to it?"

  "Not if you don't."

  "I don't, Davy. He's part of you. So I want him in my home."

  "You could learn to love him."

  "Some people aren't animal people."

  "You could learn."

  "It's unnatural, sweetheart. You don't love unless you can be loved back."

  I hold Fred tighter, as though to ask don't you think this doggie loves me?

  "Don't measure me against Stephanie because I don't roll around with Fred," Mother says.

  "Come down to Fred," I urge my mother. We are still looking at each other as though we have never seen one another before.

  "No, baby," she says. She plays around with her cold drink, rattling the ice in it, and then drinks half of it.

  t had taken us longer than a week to write the script for Miss Stuart's production of Julius Caesar, and in the middle of the second week we had been working on it we had still not managed to come to the point in the play when all the senators murder Caesar. So Miss Stuart said it was time we stopped talking about our respective characters and did something about the play to move it along faster. Altschuler spent so much time convincing everyone that Caesar was an old bastard that the good-looking kid playing Mark Antony, who was dumb, couldn't think up any reasons for honoring Caesar's memory. The play would end with my death, everyone agreed. Everyone but Miss Stuart. She said we had to follow Shakespeare's plot because that was the whole reason for putting on the play this way in the first place. Altschuler said that the only fair thing was to vote, so the class voted in favor of the play ending when Caesar is killed. The only ones voting against that ending were me and Malcolm, whose sympathies always seemed to be with the underdog. Even Mark Antony voted for the new ending, so Miss Stuart said OK, and we put on the play for the whole school on the second Friday I was there. I was pretty good. The little kids booed me a lot, so I know that I played Caesar just as Altschuler wanted. Altschuler got a big hand at the end. Miss Stuart said it was a waste of her time because Brutus isn't supposed to be the hero. Altschuler told her life is filled with surprises.

  That afternoon when everyone is piling into the bus to go home, my young buddy, Frankie Menlo, is waiting for me next to the door. He asks me how come Caesar got killed in the play and that was the end of it. He says that on television the play didn't end that way. Brutus is the villain on television, not Caesar. I tell Menlo about the vote and about how much longer we spent putting the play together than Miss Stuart wanted us to and about how Caesar probably wasn't such a kind gentleman anyway.

  Altschuler comes along and says he is going to walk home today if I want to come with him. He tells Menlo he can come too. Menlo beams and suddenly thinks Brutus is the greatest hero who ever walked the earth.

  "You mean it? I can walk home with you?" the kid says.

  "Sure," Altschuler says.

  Menlo runs onto the bus. I can hear him yelling to all his buddies that he's walking with Altschuler and Ross today, so the bus shouldn't wait up for him. The driver asks him what he thinks he's talking about. He tells Menlo that Altschuler and I live about half a mile from school, while he, Menlo, lives about four miles away, somewhere up on Riverside Drive.

  "That's all right," Menlo swears. "I don't mind walking the rest of the way by myself."

  "You won't get home until tomorrow morning," the driver tells him.

  "No, no," Menlo yells. "Ross and Altschuler said I could walk with them."

  "You may never get home!" the driver threatens. "Do you know what happens to rich kids walking the streets alone in the middle of New York?"

  Menlo doesn't ask for the answer but only looks at the driver and walks to the door.

  "I'll give you guys a rain check on that walk," he says. "I have to be home early today."

  The driver thinks Menlo is funny and laughs very loud. Menlo looks at him as though he wants to wrap the steering wheel around his neck and then waves back at Altschuler and me.

  "See you, Altschuler," he yells as though we are a hundred yards away. "See you, Ross."

  Altschuler and I walk along without saying anything. When we come to the avenue where Altschuler's friend has the candy shop, he crosses over to the other side of the street so we won't pass in front of the shop.

  "Everyone liked the play," I say. "Or everyone who spoke to me about it."

  "I'm sorry you had to come out on the short end," Altschuler says.

  "Oh, that's OK. I guess Miss Stuart won't let us do that again anyway. She was pretty mad about it ending when Caesar is killed."

  Altschuler laughs. "That's history for you."

  I laugh too. And then we don't say anything for another few minutes.

  "Did I tell you that Larry Wilkins died yesterday?" Altschuler says.

  "No," I answer.

  "He did."

  "Oh," I say.

  "I'll be going to his funeral tomorrow. That's when it's going to be. I saw him the day before. He was just asleep all the time."

  "Oh."

  We don't say anything else now but just walk along fast toward home. I don't know what I'm supposed to tell Altschuler, because I don't want to slobber all over him on account of Wilkins, whom I never knew. It would be like me trying to tell him about Grandmother and expecting that he would understand the way I thought of her, like her getting Fred for me, for example, and all the other things she did, and I did, which made it possible for Grandmother and me to be friends. Some things are personal. When you talk about them, they lose the private quality which makes them important.

  "Maybe you'd like to meet my dog Fred," I say when we get to my corner. "He's great."

  "Sure," Altschuler says.

  Altschuler follows me down my street. I ring my doorbell five or six times in short and long beeps and in a variety of sounds and combinations so that old Fred can get excited about me coming home from school. Mother isn't usually home when I come in, on account of her job. She works uptown somewhere, in advertising. But she's home a lot too, working there, writing stuff for her job. She's all the time griping that her job saps her of her creative energies and doesn't leave her enough time to write the important things she knows she is capable of. I'm muttering something about this to Altschuler, trying to explain why it's OK for me to play this symphony I'm playing on the doorbell for Fred while I'm digging into my pocket and hunting for my keys. I get the keys and open the front door, but not before giving another long beep on the doorbell for Fred. By this time the crazy old dog is barking away like a gorilla, and when the front door is opened, I can hear him jumping up against the door inside the apartment, waiting for me to come and claim him.

  "Don't be afraid if he barks at you for a minute or two," I tell Altschuler. "He is suspicious of everyone he doesn't know."

  I open the door, and Fred runs out into the hallway and jumps all over me and squirts a little on the floor. He sees Altschuler standing behind me and doesn't bark at all. He jumps on him, just as he did on me, and lets another little squirt pop out onto the floor. Altschuler bends down to Fred and rubs him under the muzzle for a second until Fred runs back to me. We go into the apartment with Fred jumping all over both of us, one at a time.

  "My mother isn't home. If she were, you would have heard her tell me something about the bestiality of dogs by now."

  We both get a laugh from that one, and I explain to Altschuler about how often Fred got to go out in Massachusetts, and how he sometimes gets out only three times a day here in New York and then for only ten or fifteen minutes, and how difficult it has been for Fred to learn to contain himself
over such a long period of time, so if he doesn't mind, we will take Fred out right away so that he can do his business. Altschuler says fine, so the three of us trot back downstairs. I put Fred's leash on him, and we take the doggie out for his late afternoon. Fred lifts his leg about four times in the first minute out, and I know how hard it has been for him to hold back, so I tell him how good he has been, and before I know it, Altschuler is telling him the same thing, and we both have another big laugh.

  "How would you feel if you could make only three times a day?" I ask.

  "I don't know," Altschuler says.

  "So what are we laughing about? This is a serious matter." We laugh.

  Fred, emptied, now has time to look at Altschuler, and I can see right away that Fred approves of him. He works himself around so that he will walk between us, except when he wants to sniff out something some other dog has left behind. Altschuler says isn't that unsanitary, and I tell him that maybe it is, but it's very dog.

  "Right, Fred?" I ask.

  Fred jumps into the gutter-surprise!-and plops. For three weeks he has been plopping in a variety of places, a couple of times right in the middle of the sidewalk. On those occasions I have been very angry with him, and he knew it. In my mind, I had compromised on the small dirt plots around the trees planted on the block, because it seemed dangerous to me to walk him in the streets themselves. Some drivers speed even in city streets, and some of them pass slow cars without bothering to see if there are dangers. I had just about given up on having Fred plop in the street, which is where he should and good dogs do. One of the things Fred does when he is plopping is to look at me with his is-this-OK-boss? look, and because I love him so much I don't really care what he does so long as no one is hurt or significantly bothered. I always say goofy things like "That's my wonderful doggie" or "Oh, look at what a good dog Fred is," and he finishes and we both go on feeling we have done the right thing by each other. But on this occasion, when Fred has plopped in the gutter, something special is called for. So I bend over and rub him and tell him what an amazing creature he is and so forth. Altschuler looks away like I'm crazy, so of course I have to give him the background. And then he bends over and tells Fred he is wonderful. Fred jumps up and gives Altschuler two licks on the face.