Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules

by David Sedaris

  We’re supposed to follow, he told Lee, and eased the car onto the road. Again the dripping trees closed over them. They were climbing now, trailing the VW along a tight spiral. It was impossible to see more than twenty yards ahead. At times they passed mailboxes, or shallow openings in the woods that indicated roads, but for the most part there was only the green-black forest, the thick pudding rain.

  Where’s that college he teaches at? asked Lee. Ted looked at her and tried to unravel the history of her thoughts for the last silent half hour. She still wore her languid, neutral expression. The Madonna attends a required meeting of the Ladies’ Auxiliary.

  Sixty miles away. No, farther. Eighty. It was another thing he wondered about, Bernie’s precarious instructor job. Four sections of composition. Abortion, Pro and Con. My First Date. Topic sentences. Footnotes.

  And he married one of his students?

  Ted nodded. It was hard for him to imagine Bernie as a figure of authority or some little girl regarding him with the reverence and hysteria of student crushes. But it had happened.

  Lee pointed. The VW’s bumper was winking at them and Ted slowed, ready to turn. Now it was scarcely a road they followed but a dirt lane. Milder, deciduous trees interlaced above them and screened the rain somewhat. They rocked along the muddy ruts for half a mile.

  Then the sudden end of the lane, the cabin of dark brown shingles with Bernie already waving from the porch. Ted was out of the car almost before it had stopped, was shaking Bernie’s hand and saying something like Son of a gun, and grinning. Bernie said, Valentine, you lout, and reached up to pound him on the back.

  The women drifted after them. Hey Paula, come shake hands with Ted. And this is Lee. Bernie, Paula. Ted found himself appraising Lee as she climbed the steps, took satisfaction in her length of leg, her severely beautiful face now softened with a smile. The four of them stood nodding at each other for a moment. Like two sets of dolls built to different scale, Ted thought, the Doyles so small, he and Lee an angular six inches taller. Furious exercise had kept Ted in shape, and he knew the faint line of sunburn under his eyes was becoming. He realized he was standing at attention, and cursed his vanity.

  Bernie looked more than ever like a Swiss toymaker as imagined by Walt Disney. Small bones and white supple hands. His gray eyes unfocused behind rimless glasses. The ever-present pipe which, when inserted, drew his whole face into a preoccupied, constipated look. He had grown a dark manicured beard.

  And Paula? He knew her to be at least twenty-four, but she could have passed for sweet eighteen. Snub little nose. Smiling mouth like the squiggle painted on a china doll. Green eyes in that pink transparent skin. Yes, she would be something to take notice of in a stuffy classroom.

  Even as he absorbed and ordered his impressions the group broke, Bernie pushing the front door open, Paula talking about food. He followed Bernie into a paneled room and the damp, bone-deep cold that would accompany the whole weekend first seized him. He heard Lee’s lightly inflected voice keeping her promise: What a lovely fireplace. We can tell ghost stories around it.

  You bet, said Bernie, and squatted before it, poking the grate. There’s even dry wood on the porch.

  Looking at him, Ted experienced the uneasy process of having to square his observations with his memories. As if this were not really Bernie until he conformed with Ted’s image of him. How long had it been, three years? He began to be more sure of himself as he noted familiar mannerisms surfacing. Bernie’s solemnity; he discussed firewood in the same tone another man might use for religion. The deftness of his hands wielding the fireplace tools. Ted imagined him shaping chunks of pine into cuckoo clocks, bears, and monkeys…

  Now stop that, he warned himself. It was a writer’s curse, this verbal embroidery. Never seeing anything as it was, always analyzing and reformulating it. Maybe the entire habit of observation, the thing he trained himself in, was just a nervous tic, a compulsion. He shook his head and joined Lee in her exploration of the cabin.

  The main room was high-ceilinged, dark. In hot weather he imagined its shadows would bless the skin, but now the bare floors made his feet ache with cold. There were two bedrooms, one on each side of the main room. The furniture was a mixture of wicker and raw wood. In the rear were a trim new kitchen and bathroom. They stepped out the back door and Ted whistled.

  Even in the rain the blue-gray bowl of the lake freshened his eyes. Its irregular shoreline formed bays, coves, little tongues of land, all furred with silent pine. He could not see the opposite shore. There was an island just where he might have wished for one, a mound of brush and rock. The air smelled clean and thin.

  Lee spoke to Bernie, who had joined them. It’s incredible. Just too lovely.

  Bernie grinned, as if the lake were a treat he had prepared especially for them. And Ted felt all his discomfort drop away as he saw his friend’s happiness, his desire to make them happy. God bless Bernie; he’d forget all this gloomy nonsense about artistic accomplishment. Are there many cabins up here? he asked.

  Quite a few. But the lake is so big and the trees so thick we have a lot of privacy. He pointed with his pipe. There’s the boathouse. And dock. No beach, I’m afraid, it’s all mud.

  They stood in the shelter of the porch, rain hanging like lace from the gutters. Then Lee said, Too cold out here for me, and they all went inside.

  Paula was rummaging through groceries in the kitchen. Here, said Lee. Let me do something useful. A little cluster of polite words filled the air, Paula demurring, Lee insisting. Ted hoped that for once Lee would be graceful about helping in the kitchen, leave him and Bernie alone without getting sarcastic later about Man-Talk and Woman’s Work. He tried to catch her eye but she was pulling her blonde hair into a knot and asking Paula about the mayonnaise.

  Bernie offered him a beer and they drifted to the living room. Sitting down, Ted had a moment of apprehension, like the beginning of a job interview. Bernie frowned and coaxed his pipe into life. How often had he used it as a prop; Ted knew his shyness. At last the bowl reddened. So tell me, Bernie said. How goes it with you?

  Ted realized how much he’d rehearsed his answer: Not too bad. But I’ll never be rich.

  Bernie chuckled. Poor but honest.

  Poor but poor. With Lee’s job we get by. And I do some free-lancing, write ad copy for a car dealer, that sort of thing. He shrugged. And how about you?

  Ted was aware he had shifted too quickly, had seemed to brush off Bernie’s question in an attempt to be polite, reciprocal. Damn. He’d have to watch that.

  Ah, Bernie said. The pastoral life of a college instructor. It’s like being a country priest, really, with your life revolving around the feast days. Registration. Final exams. Department meetings on First Fridays.

  You’re getting tired of it?

  It’s a job, Ted. Like anything else it has its ups and downs. Actually I’m glad it’s not excessively glamorous. This way I don’t feel tied to it, committed. I can stay fluid, you know?

  What would you do instead?

  Sell hardware. Open a museum. I don’t know. Paula wants to work as a photographer. She’s pretty good. And I wouldn’t mind getting back to the writing. It’s been simmering in me for a long time.

  That hint of justification. Ted felt the same prepared quality in Bernie’s answer as in his own. He risked his question: Have you been able to get anything done?

  Any writing, you mean? Dribs and drabs. I decided what I needed was to remove myself from pressure, you know? Work at my own pace without worrying about marketing a finished product. Of course I know that’s not the way you go about it.

  Yeah. It’s out of the typewriter and into the mails.

  You still work on a schedule?

  Absolutely. Seems to be the only way I get anything done. Lee covers for me. I have tantrums if the phone rings.

  You must really throw yourself into the thing.

  The implied sympathy, the chance to speak of his frustrations with someone who would un
derstand them, was a luxury. Jesus, he said. You spend hours wrestling with yourself, trying to keep your vision intact, your intensity undiminished. Sometimes I have to stick my head under the tap to get my wits back. And for what? You know what publishing is like these days. Paper costs going up all the time. Nothing gets printed unless it can be made into a movie. Everything is media. Crooked politicians sell their unwritten memoirs for thousands. I’ve got a great idea for a novel. It’s about a giant shark who’s possessed by a demon while swimming in the Bermuda Triangle. And the demon talks in CB lingo, see? There’ll be recipes in the back.

  Bernie laughed and Ted continued. Then the quarterlies, the places you expect to publish serious writing. They’re falling all over themselves trying to be trendy, avant-garde. If you write in sentence fragments and leave plenty of blank space on the page, you’re in. Pretentiousness disguised as trailblazing. All the editors want to set themselves up as interpreters of a new movement. I hope they choke on their own jargon. Anti-meta-post-contemporary-surfictional literature. Balls.

  He stopped for breath. I’m sorry, he said. Didn’t mean to get carried away.

  Not at all. It does me good to hear a tirade now and then. Reminds me of college, makes me feel ten years younger.

  Still. He should not have spoken with such bitterness. It sounded like he was making excuses. Ted smiled, lightening his tone. The artist takes his lonely stand against the world.

  As well he ought to. But really, Valentine, don’t you get tired of beating your head against all that commercialism? Trying to compete with it? I mean, of course you do, but do you think it affects what you write?

  Was it Bernie’s solemnity that always made his questions sound so judgmental? Ted knew it was more than an issue of mannerisms. Bernie pondered things, thought them through; you respected his sincerity. Ted gave the only answer pride allowed: No, because the work can’t exist in a vacuum. It has to get out there in the world, and reach people. Ted drained his beer and ventured to define the issue between them. You’re saying it’s better to be an Emily Dickinson, a violet by a mossy stone half-hidden to the eye, that sort of thing. Keep it in shoeboxes in the closet so you can remain uncorrupted.

  Bernie turned his hands palms upward and managed to express dissent by spreading his white fingers. Just that it’s possible to lose sight of what you set out to do. Even get too discouraged.

  How quickly we’ve moved into position, Ted thought. Each of us defending our lives. He remembered his earlier resolution to speak tactfully, cushion any comparison between their accomplishments. And here was Bernie seeming to demand such comparison. How easy it would be to make some mention of his publications, play up some of the things he’d muted in his letters, insist on Bernie’s paying tribute to them. He even admitted to himself that beneath everything he’d wanted his success acknowledged. Like the high school loser who dreams of driving to the class reunion in a custom-made sports car. As if only those who knew your earlier weakness could verify your success.

  But he would not indulge himself. Partly because, like his earlier outburst, it would threaten to say too much, and partly because he wanted this meeting to be without friction. Couldn’t they rediscover their younger, untried selves? It was a kind of nostalgia. So he said, I don’t know, Bernie. You may be right. But the only way for me to accomplish anything is by competing with the market.

  Bernie considered this, seemed to accept it as a final statement. He dumped his pipe into the fireplace. Ted noticed the beginning of a tonsure, a doorknob-sized patch of naked scalp. The sight enabled him to recapture all his tenderness. Shall we join the ladies? Bernie asked, rising.

  They were sitting at the kitchen table with mugs of coffee. Well, Ted said, resting a hand on Lee’s shoulder. I hope you haven’t been bored. He meant it half as apology, half as warning: you’d better not be.

  Au contraire, Lee answered. We’ve been trying to reconcile post-Hegelian dogma with Jamesian pragmatism. But she grinned.

  And Paula said, Actually, we were telling raunchy jokes. Give us ten more minutes.

  He liked her. Her pinkness, plumpness. Like a neat little bird, all smooth lines and down. Her round good-humored chin. And Lee seemed to be doing all right with her.

  I think it’s quit raining, said Bernie. If you’ve got sturdy enough shoes we could take a hike.

  It was still very wet under the trees. A careless tug at a branch might flip cold rainbow-edged drops down your back. And the sky was gray as concrete. But they enjoyed the silence, the soft sucking ground matted with last year’s needles. They perched on a fallen tree at the lake’s edge and chunked stones into the crisp water. Bernie explained it was too early, too cool, for the black flies whose bites made bloody circles just beneath the skin.

  How often do you get up here? Ted asked. Bernie told him about every other weekend when the weather was right. Ted launched into abundant, envious speech: they were lucky sons-of-bitches, did they know that back in Illinois there were only tame little man-made lakes, tidy parks, lines of Winnebagos like an elephant graveyard, right Lee? As if complimenting this part of Bernie’s life might restore some balance between them.

  They walked back single-file along the sunken trail. Ted was at the rear. Lee’s blondeness looked whiter, milkier, out here. Perhaps it was the heaviness of the dark green air, like the light just before a thunderstorm which plays up contrasts. Bernie and Paula’s heads were the same shade of sleek brown, slipping in and out of his vision. It struck him that once again he was observing and being conscious of himself as an observer. It was a habit he’d fallen into, not necessarily a bad one. But he’d been working very hard at the writing lately (Lee had insisted on this vacation; he rather begrudged the time spent away from his desk) and this heightened self-awareness was a sign of strain. As if he couldn’t really escape his work or the persona that went with it.

  The Artist’s impressions of a walk in the woods. The Artist’s view on viewing. The Artist on Art. How do you get your ideas for stories, Mr. Valentine? Well, I simply exploit everything I come into contact with. One ended, of course, by losing all spontaneity. You saw people as characters, sunsets as an excuse for similes—

  Bernie called a warning over his shoulder just as Ted felt a drop of rain slide down his nose. They quickened their pace to a trot as the rain fell, first in fat splatters that landed as heavily as frogs, then finer, harder. By the time they reached the porch their clothes were dark and dripping.

  Fire, said Bernie. Coffee and hot baths, said Paula. The movement, the busyness, cheered them as much as the dry clothes. When at last they sat on each side of the stone fireplace, the odor of smoke working into their skins and hair, they all felt the same sense of shelter.

  Damn, said Bernie. I wanted to take you fishing. But he looked comfortable, his pipe bobbing in his mouth.

  Maybe tomorrow, said Paula. The rain had polished her skin, now the fire was warming it, bringing out different tints: apricot, cameo. She and Bernie made a peaceful, domestic couple. He could imagine them sitting like this, on either side of the fire, for the next thirty years. The retired Swiss toymaker and his wife.

  But was Bernie happy? Did he feel, as Ted would have in his place, a sense of failure, of goals having shrunk. You never knew. Or, this visit would probably not allow him to learn. The time was too short to break down much of the politeness that passed between them as guest and host. Recapturing their former intimacy, that intensity, seemed as difficult as remembering what virginity had felt like. They should have left the wives behind, just come up here for a messy bachelor weekend of drinking and cards. This impulse moved him to ask if anyone wanted a whiskey.

  They did. He passed glasses, leaned back into his chair. Well, said Lee. It’s too early to tell ghost stories.

  Ted and I could talk about our misspent youth.

  She wants something ghostly, Doyle, not ghastly.

  Oh go ahead, Lee urged Bernie. Tell me something that can be used against him. She was at her m
ost animated, perhaps from the first bite of the liquor. The Madonna is photographed for a Seagram’s commercial. Go ahead, she repeated.

  Tell her I was a football hero.

  If you won’t tell Paula about that indecent exposure thing.

  Agreed. Ted gulped at his drink to induce the mood of nostalgia. One thing I’ll always remember. You and me taking a bottle of strawberry wine up on the roof of the humanities building.

  Did you really, said Paula.

  We thought we were Bohemians, Bernie explained. Artistic, not ethnic.

  We pretended it was absinthe.

  A rooftop in Paris at the turn of the century.

  I was James Joyce.

  I was Oscar Wilde.

  We were going to be paperback sensations.

  We were full of shit.

  I don’t know, Ted objected. I mean, certainly we were naive. Who isn’t at twenty? But you have to begin with wild idealism, dreams of glory. It’s the raw fuel that gets you through the disappointments.

  You mean the brute facts of editors, publishing.

  Ted nodded. The manuscripts that come back stained with spaghetti sauce. The places that misspell your name. All the ambiguities of success. If we’d known what was actually involved in writing, we probably never would have attempted it.

  When we leave here, Lee put in, we have to go to New York and talk with Ted’s agent. You wouldn’t believe the nastiness and wheeler-dealer stuff that goes on in that New York scene. It’s like a court in Renaissance Italy. Intrigues within intrigues.

  Bernie raised his eyebrows above the rims of his glasses. You have an agent now?

  Yes. Since last November. He’s trying to place the novel for me.

  And you’ve finished the novel? Paula, do we have champagne? I’ve been hearing about this book for years.

  Well, I’ve finished the draft. If it’s accepted I’ll no doubt have to do rewrites. Damn Lee for bringing up the agent; it would only make Bernie more aware of the gap between their achievements. He searched for some way to de-escalate things. You should be glad you’ve escaped all this messiness so far. Retained your youthful innocence.