Desire Provoked

by Tracy Daugherty

  He’s had friends. Fathers like himself who’ve sacrificed exciting careers as anglers, goalies, and entrepreneurs to raise their children. Watching baseball on Saturday afternoon with one such friend, he encountered, face-to-face, the sadness that grips certain fathers. “Right there. That was me. I was up for that part,” his friend said. On the screen a man putted around a toilet bowl in a boat. “Katie was pregnant. Insisted there wasn’t enough security in acting, so I went to work for State Farm.” His friend gazed wistfully at the little boat. “Ah well, what the hell,” he said. “I insure suckers ten times that size.”

  Potency is an ugly thing.

  Still, thinking back, fathering was perhaps the source of erotic mystery for Adams—a sleeplessness beneath his pleasure with Pamela at night.

  There was a park by the house where they lived in the days before Deidre was born. Adams walked there with Toby. In the evenings other fathers joined him. Softballs, footballs. The clink of skate keys against nickels and dimes, money for ice cream, in the fathers’ heavy pockets. He remembers a group of young women and men marching up the street past the park, carrying signs. It was the early seventies. The last legs of the youth movement, they were denouncing Richard Nixon with not much conviction. Their signs read STOP THE BOMBING IN CAMBODIA and ANDY WARHOL FOR PRESIDENT .

  “Daddy, who’s Andy Warhol,” asked a neighbor’s daughter.

  “No one knows, honey,” her father said.

  Now that neighbor’s in Seattle—like other fathers, he hit the road in service of free enterprise. Hundreds of fathers balancing themselves on the white stripes of the highways, wives and children stacked on their shoulders as high as ice cream cones.

  Other fathers have died. Adams misses them. He shared many terrifying moments with them, signing release forms in emergency rooms, squirming in metal folding chairs in recital halls. They taught the little girls how to blow their noses without bursting their eardrums, and the little boys how to scratch their balls, if scratch they must, in secret, through their pockets. They were good fathers, all of them, full of love for their wives and gratitude for a cold glass of beer, with failing legs but the courage to dive for any wild pitch that came their way.

  He finds an excuse to visit the Records Office. As he’s thumbing through the photo file, he asks Jordan, “Everything all right?” “Yeah.”

  “I think those visits with Mayer are a waste of time, don’t you? He says the same thing every time.”

  “He’s all right,” Jordan says. “He isn’t a gung-ho company man like everybody else around here. It’s refreshing.”

  Adams wonders if he has just been insulted. “Has he ever said anything you could use?”

  “What business is that of yours?”

  “Nothing. Wasn’t personal. I just don’t find his little profiles very helpful.”

  Jordan puts down the stack of 8 x 10’s he’s been holding. “I don’t know what this thing is that you seem to have about me, Sam, but I wish you’d stop it. I’ve never seen your fucking yard, all right? And I’ll tell you something else, if I need to see Mayer, it’s because you’re driving me crazy.”

  He pours himself a beer and opens a bag of chips. He walks to the living room, sits at his drafting table, studies his latest map of the property Carter has recently acquired.

  Something is wrong. What is it?

  The isohyet. What about it?

  The ninety-eighth meridian.

  Adams squints, sips his beer.

  When someone fouls up, the volume of mail passing back and forth within On-Line increases dramatically. Interoffice memos travel between floors, beginning “Earlier we discussed …” or “In reference to last week’s conference …” Each department goes on record as having been clean.

  The company library, containing a number of atlases and journals, is located in a niche off the coffee room. There, on a shelf along one wall, a row of legal books entitled Words and Phrases can be found. These volumes provide legal definitions for every occasion. When a problem arises within the company, the books disappear from the library.

  Carter’s got his lawyers, Mallow and Vox, working overtime on the real estate deals. Vox is a tiny man, lost in his clothes. His face is as battered as a drum head, ravaged, it appears, from serious bouts with acne. Adams has never had a direct conversation with him, talks past him in meetings.

  Mallow is nervous and pale. Adams hasn’t had occasion to work with him, either, but knows from the newsletter that he has lobbied in Washington with lawyers from corporations in their congressional district. In addition, both Mallow and Vox have formed, at Carter’s request, a Political Action Committee. Company policy states that management-level personnel must contribute to the committee. The rest of the employees are not required to do so, but know that failure to give is interpreted by Carter as refusal to support the company’s goals.

  When Mallow comes around, pale hand hanging open, Adams makes a point of giving a little more each time.

  The offending left hand: On the freeway Adams waves to the world. He signals waiters and cashiers with his left hand. With his left hand he acknowledges Jordan from across the coffee room. When he speaks to Pamela on the phone, he holds the receiver in his left hand.

  “The other night Deidre woke me up and said a bad clown had come out of her coloring book and tried to stick his puffy cap down her throat,” Pamela says. “She couldn’t understand why I didn’t search her room. Then I thought, if she can’t tell the difference between waking life and dreams, and if there’s anything at all to Aristotle’s notion that the pleasure of art is imitation, then Deidre can’t appreciate art. She doesn’t know it’s imitation. So I bought a clown suit—”

  “Pam?” Adams says. “Are you terrorizing our daughter?”

  Pamela laughs. “It’s true. There was no pleasure on her face.”

  Mosquitoes swarm around his arms. He passes the Polish dance hall and the cemetery that round off one end of his neighborhood (it has never been zoned). Rosa the fortune-teller is standing on her front porch in a print dress, a purple scarf draped around her head. She picks her teeth with a toothpick, gazes at the tombstones across the street.

  In the public library, two blocks from his house, Adams finds books on climatology, geography, and federal land grant programs. He carries the books to a wooden table and switches on the green reading lamp.

  The ninety-eighth meridian. Of course.

  At the turn of the century, American meteorologists drew a thirty-inch isohyet along the ninety-eighth meridian, indicating the westernmost boundary along which the annual rainfall averaged thirty inches. Thirty inches, along with rate of evaporation and seasonal distribution, was, according to the meteorologists, the bare minimum needed to grow crops. Carter’s property lies west of the line.

  “You’re making an awful lot of noise about a thirty-inch line,” Carter says.

  “That line could be very important to a number of families.”

  “The county averages over forty inches of rain a year.”

  “Yes, but the rainfall isn’t evenly distributed. In the fall, parts of the county experience droughtlike conditions. The land looks fertile, but those are limestone hills containing only surface soil. Those shrubs are stunted trees.”

  “Granted, it won’t be easy to cultivate…”

  “It’ll be impossible to cultivate.”

  “Damn it, Sam, you’re too smart for your own good,” Carter says, leaning forward in his chair.

  “I suggest—”

  “How do you like your computer?”

  “I like it very much.”

  “We’ve got to pay for it, hmm?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hmm?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then move the isohyet a quarter of an inch to the left,” Carter says.

  “Excuse me?”

  “After all, the county records aren’t all that accurate.” Carter opens the office door. “And while you’re at it, draw up a mental ma
p of the area and an environmental stress chart of the county.”

  A foul-up: City council, at the request of its senior member, a former Spenserian scholar, renames one of its residential streets Faerie Queene Boulevard. Tenants in apartments on Faerie Queene Boulevard move out. Owners complain that they cannot rent property in the area.

  Several thousand maps have been printed, bearing the name Faerie Queene Boulevard.

  Memos fly back and forth—first within city hall, then between city hall and On-Line, finally within On-Line itself. Thousands of tax dollars later, Words and Phrases reappears on the shelves of the company library.

  A recipe comes in the mail. Stew with steak. He makes it for Jill.

  “Scrumptious,” she says, scooting next to him on the bed. “Your recipe?”

  “The power company’s. It came with their bill.” “Bless them,” Jill says.

  He pulls her to his chest. She asks about his wife. “She works at the high school,” he tells her, “balancing PA speakers in the rafters of the boys’ gymnasium.”

  “Tell me about your kids.”

  “I’ve hired them out to the fair. They have to push the Ferris wheel all day long to keep it spinning.”

  She laughs. He looks past her through the window. Outside her apartment on a billboard, a whiskey ad: a giant glass, ice tumbling over blocks of ice.

  Toby has flunked his science class—inevitable, like the failure of the city’s fiscal plan and the raising of taxes, but disheartening nevertheless. Toby does not seem upset at the prospect of summer school.

  “What does your mother say about it?” Adams says.

  “She wants to send me to a doctor.”

  “What kind of doctor?”

  “A shrink.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  “Is there any peach ice cream,” Deidre asks.

  “Yes, but finish your hot dog first.”

  After dinner Adams walks with them past the Polish dance hall and the cemetery. The evening is cool. The kids enjoy poking around the old neighborhood. Deidre still seems to think she’ll be back here any day.

  They encounter the Reverend Sister Rosa on the sidewalk in front of her house. Toby assumes a defensive stance, Deidre hides behind Adams.

  “Why, hello, I haven’t seen you in a long time,” Rosa says, extending her arm toward Toby.

  “Hi,” Toby says, stiffly shaking the woman’s hand.

  “And how are you?” Rosa asks, peering around Adams’ legs.

  “Fine,” Deidre answers.

  “Lovely evening.”

  “Yes,” says Adams, edging the kids past her.

  “I was just getting ready to sit out here on the porch with a plate of spaghetti. Would you like to join me? I made a big pot. You know how it is with spaghetti.”

  “Thanks, we’ve eaten.”

  “I see. Taking a little stroll, then?”

  “That’s right.”

  “It’s a wonderful neighborhood if you can afford to stay. My husband died six years ago, and it’s been a real struggle.” She has managed to pay off the house, though, and guesses she’ll die in it. “When I’m gone, they won’t have far to carry me,” she says, nodding at the cemetery across the street.

  “We live here, too,” Deidre says.

  “Used to,” Toby corrects her.

  “I know what,” Rosa says, looking sadly at the children. “I’ll bet the kids would like to have their fortunes told, am I right?”

  “We’ve got to-”

  “On me.” She winks at Adams. “It’ll only take a second and it’ll be fun for them. Maybe they’ll get lucky in love.” Before he can think of a reply, she’s headed up her walk, motioning for him to follow.

  “Did you know she’s a witch?” Deidre whispers, tugging on Adams’ pants.

  “Shhh,” Adams says. “Be friendly.”

  Rosa’s front room is small, lighted by a single lamp with a yellow shade. On the television, underneath the rabbit ears, a stack of newspapers and magazines. Paintings of Jesus and photographs of Eugene Debs cover the walls, garlic stalks wilt in blue vases around the room.

  “Can I get you a glass of water?”

  The kids shake their heads.

  Rosa produces a deck of Tarot cards from her dress pocket and flips through them like a picture book.

  “You’re first,” she tells Toby. “Shuffle the cards, and think about what you’d like to know.”

  The cards fascinate Adams. He doesn’t believe in their ability to foretell the future, but as a symbol system they intrigue him, and he’s taken with the idea of mapping time. Instinctively, he reaches for the Two of Wands. It depicts a young man looking over battlements to the sea. In his right hand he grips a small globe; in his left he clutches a staff.

  Rosa tells him, “This is the lord of the manor. The card indicates riches, magnificence, dominance, skill in science.”

  Adams smiles. Rosa adds, “When the card appears upside down in a reading, it indicates sadness, suffering, lack of will.”

  Adams lays the card aside.

  The Nine of Wands—a young man, head wrapped in bandages, leaning on a staff—reminds him of Jordan: the vacant stare, the air of patience and immobility.

  “Cunning, hidden strength, opposition,” Rosa says, tapping the card. “This person is an able adversary.”

  The Two of Swords: a blindfolded woman balancing a pair of swords on her shoulders. She sits on a bench with her back to the sea, a crescent moon above. “This would be a very desirable card for you in a reading,” Rosa tells him. “It indicates balanced forces, an end to family quarrels. It can also, in rare cases, mean impotence.”

  Toby will be a great man, Rosa predicts, like Churchill or Kennedy. Deidre will have many children.

  “I want to be a great man, too,” she says.

  “You will, of course you will,” Rosa tells her.

  The spaghetti is about to boil over on Rosa’s stove, and Adams uses this as an excuse to get away. Politely, and with thanks, he hustles the children out the door.

  “Listen, I’m starting a group séance on Thursday nights. Ten percent discount if you contact two or more spirits. Drop by sometime.”

  “Thanks, I will,” Adams says.

  “She’s a neat lady,” Deidre muses on the way home. “I liked it, what she said about me.”

  “I thought you said she was a witch.”

  “That was before I was a great man.”

  Adams places his watch on the back porch, next to the barbecue pit. Jordan does not appear. The following evening Adams leaves a ring.

  Putting someone in his place

  I can’t see my way clear

  Getting to the bottom of things

  That’s beneath me

  On the straight and narrow

  Get lost

  Leading someone up the garden path

  This is really nowhere

  Straightening his desk at the end of the day, he discovers in a stack of papers the program notes from last year’s conference on plate tectonics. Over drinks in a hotel lobby a seismologist from UCLA had turned to him. “In an information-based society, what happens to blue-collar workers?” he said. “You and me, information-gatherers, we’re the elite. But we’re not making plans for people who work with their hands.” Adams was tired. He shared a room with Carter, though their schedules overlapped and they didn’t see each other much. Carter’s presentation had been given a prime spot on the bill—Friday evening, closing night. Adams was relegated to Tuesday afternoon, when many of the conferees were playing tennis or enjoying late lunches.

  He ordered another gin and tonic, nodded perfunctorily at his colleague, and tried to spin the ashtray. It was glued to the table. “It’s the same lack of foresight that gets us into wars,” the seismologist continued. “In a million years the continents will have cracked so much you won’t be able to tell America from Spain. We fight and sign treaties as if nothing’s going to change, but in a geologically active
world, what does territoriality mean?”

  “Here’s the information you wanted.”

  “Good, good, come in,” says Carter. “What did you find?”

  “The Deerbridge Road area is generally perceived as undesirable.”

  “We’ve got an ad campaign that’ll change that.”

  “Also, I drew an Ignorance Surface Map. People tend to confuse similar shapes when they’re side by side—Arizona and New Mexico are often mistaken for one another. And it occurred to me that Richmond County, which is nothing but scrub oaks, is shaped a little like the northern half of Elgin County. Perhaps people confuse the two, and think your lots are barren.”

  “Wonderful. We can use that.”

  “Of course, rainfall amounts being what they are—”

  “Right. And the isohyet?”

  “Where you wanted it.”

  “Very good. Do you know what we’re doing, Sam? We’re educating people’s desires.”

  “You mean, telling them what they want?”

  “That’s a little hard. Let’s say we’re paving the way for change. Sit tight, hmm? Phase Two in a couple of days.”

  Adams tells Carter he will not alter any more maps. Falsifying documents is not what he had in mind when he came to work for On-Line. Besides, prestige does not accompany local projects; overseas fieldwork is the best means of gaining promotion and respect.

  “I was hoping for another international assignment,” he says. “Now’s a particularly good time for me to travel.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “My wife and I separated.”

  “Sorry to hear it.”

  “Thank you. Anyway, with the kids gone, I have less responsibility at home. I’m a good man in the field, and it’s been over two years.”

  “Your skills are needed here, Sam.” He taps the Ixodes on Adams’ lapel. “At least for the time being. We’ll consider an international assignment in a few months, okay?”

  Late at night in his office , Adams fiddles with the console . A single fluorescent bulb buzzes over head. Below, the street is quiet .