Postcards from Pinsk

by Larry Duberstein

  Meanwhile he was having trouble with his knots. His hands were not so steady, his fingers unfit for such finicky work. Fearing he would fumble with the string only made him fumble the more, until finally he spilled a box of crayons and they all started laughing and whaling away at the sheet. Orrin didn’t know what to do. At first he was torn between an impulse to cut-and-run and a wildly absurd compulsion to continue the fiction, to finish the game up in good form. Then, rising up between these poles, came a brief flood of fury and he stood. And his aspect, looming over the blue paisley, must have been terrible indeed to judge by the abrupt silence of the little fisherfolk. He might have gone primal on them, chased them around the room kicking ass, had he not seen their vivid abject terror.

  “The Old Stock Pond,” he announced, with regained dignity, “is closed for the holiday. So sorry, you know.”

  “What holiday!” the Jason was in his face demanding, and others quickly echoed the challenge.

  “Jethro Summers’ Birthday, of course. No school today, all across this great nation of ours.”

  “That’s cause of Abraham Lincoln,” several shouted.

  “You don’t believe that, do you? Lincoln? They only say that so the other kids won’t be jealous of Jethro. Pond Closed, though, and anyone who didn’t catch a fish yet will please come to my office right away.”

  “Where’s your office?”

  “Yeah, where’s your office?”

  Orrin brought three of them into the coat closet and let them tangle it out for the remaining trinkets. He smiled down on them, his crocodile smile, thinking terrible ten-fingered monsters. As they emerged from among the coats, Phyll went to the kitchen to get the phone and Clyde announced the cake and ice cream. Orrin came to table in a conical turquoise party hat, and with a dignified straightfaced reserve helped to settle them into chairs.

  “It’s your grandmother,” Phyll hollered from the kitchen, “Come say hello,” and Jethro rose from the groaning-board with a face as lumpy and elongated as a sausage. Clyde touched him gently and admonished, “Be good,” as the lad went off to pay his dues.

  But was it Gail on the phone, or was it Phyllis’ mother Dierdre? Coming out on the train, Orrin had wondered if Gail would be at the party too, and he had felt oddly nervous of the impression he might make, as on a first date. As guests arrived, he would open the door with mixed anticipation and a carefully arranged careless face. When he learned she was not coming, he was both relieved and deeply disappointed. Crazy I am I am, he thought, either way.

  Was it Gail on the line now? It doesn’t matter, he told himself, doesn’t make a bit of difference. And yet: that might be her, her voice, less than twelve feet away. My wife, Clyde’s mother, Jethro’s Gran—talking and I cannot hear her, she doesn’t even want me to.

  At last the decks were clear, although inevitably one child was abandoned forever and Phyllis ran him home. “It’s easier than calling the parents with a gentle reminder,” Clyde explained, “because then you’re stuck waiting. And if they’re the sort that have forgotten the kid once today—”

  “You don’t think they meant to leave him?

  “Well who knows. But everyone is too spent for more waiting at this point.”

  “I know I am—spent. I’m not in such bad condition, you know, I do a lot of walking. But this.”

  “Birthdays are rough. And you bore the brunt of it, Dad.”

  “Good old Grandpa.”

  “Well come sit down, now that we have our house back. I’ll tell you my idea for your trip next month.”

  “By all means. Why next month? Why a trip? Where to?”

  “Next month because the weather here will still be nasty, but it gives you time to plan it. A trip because it’s the best therapy for handling this sort of thing. And where, anywhere, as long as it’s warm.”

  “The best therapy, no less! Here I, a doctor of the mind, advised by my own baby and a layman to boot.”

  “That’s right. You disagree?”

  “Oh no. It’s good advice, and I’ve given it out enough times that I had better agree with it. When applicable. But you see, I have a number of projects going just now. And it happens I’ve been enjoying myself tremendously.”

  “So things are better. What, have you got yourself a gal?”

  Orrin almost blushed. Not just at the prospect of a “gal” (so trippingly phrased) but at the source of such inquiry. His baby indeed, once a putty-soft seven-pounder in the crook of his arm, wondering aloud if Orrin had taken on a new partner in the very process which had brought him forth! Life was certainly strange. Then another thought crossed his mind.

  “Clydie!”

  “What? Why not, for goodness’ sake. It is just a matter of time.”

  “Are you trying to tell me, to prepare me in your charming roundabout fashion, for the announcement that your mother has someone? Is that what we’re working up to?”

  “Not a bit, Dad, I’m not in on that secret. She may have someone, for all we know. Though to be honest, I didn’t really expect her to, not so soon.”

  “And you did expect me. Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Your mother is a very attractive woman. That isn’t supposed to be so difficult for a son to imagine.”

  “I’m sure she is. She was a bit down on the male-female experiment, that’s all. Whereas you were going to feel a need to replace her.”

  “That’s silly, Doctor Summers. Life has much more to offer than the male-female experiment, as you call it. Especially if you are fifty-nine next month. Which you are, if you are me.”

  “Come on, Doctor Summers, you’re hardly a fossil. Actually, now that I’m getting up there in years myself, I thought I’d stumbled onto a psychological truism—”

  “Another one?”

  “—which is that you never feel any different. You go along aging one day at a time, and the years do go by more quickly, yet you are the same person you were in college. On one level. You don’t register the changes. You don’t ever feel old.”

  “Yes, well, I remember thinking that too. But somewhere between your age and mine, one does indeed begin to register the changes. Which isn’t the point. The point is you underestimate how much I care for your mother. It isn’t simply all the years we spent together, it’s that I love her. Your herrible horrible difficult mother I happen to love, very much.”

  Orrin did not ordinarily refer to his love for Gail. As he made this statement to Clyde now (and it seemed very important both that he make it and that he address it to Clyde) Orrin tried to recall whether he had mentioned love to Gail herself in recent years. It did not seem likely. But that was nothing. Given Gail’s outlook on things, and her quick untamed tongue, it might be masochistic saying love to her. Better simply to act on it, for talk was cheap after a certain number of times around the track anyway—either a relationship was working or it was not.

  He had definitely mentioned his love to Theo last autumn—or at least he had said more than once how much he needed Gail, by which one surely meant the same thing. Whiskey helped him say it then and whiskey may have helped him say it now. Nonetheless Orrin knew whiskey could not make him say it if it were not true.

  “Speaking of my loved ones, who spurn me, how is your sister doing these days?”

  “Very well, actually, to judge from the reviews. I haven’t seen her either. In fact, whenever I think about where we are, Phyll and I, and where Elspeth is, I am amazed that I ever see her.”

  “Reviews?”

  “In The Phoenix. She made Up-and-Coming groups for the year, with special kudos for the songwriting.”

  “But that’s terrific. You should tell me—I’m ashamed to have to ask—the name of her outfit.”

  “Air Force Two. They are opening for Warts and All at The Rat in a few weeks—a big gig for Up-and-Comers.”

  The Rat? Warts and All? It was a silly game they played, thought Orrin, though of course it was probably great fun for them. He felt very acce
pting of the whole enterprise, especially with the award for writing songs. That was certainly a bonus after the loud electric howling he had imagined. He would have to hear her out, his daughter the composer.

  “What was it again, The Air Force? So military?”

  “Air Force Two. It’s about the kinds of force in the air, she says, as in ‘you are on the air’ versus the planes of death. That’s a direct quote. And you know about Air Force One.”

  “The presidential plane. I do now. I’m afraid I failed to make the connection on my own. Well, it is the sort of name that becomes famous, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right. Because of Air Force One.”

  “I suppose that could be it. But tell me, where is this Rat located?”

  “Kenmore Square, maybe?” Clyde re-lit his pipe and shrugged again: not his territory.

  “Oh well, I’m sure Eli will know.”

  “Eli will?”

  “Didn’t I tell you about Eli Paperman? I must have. He is my room-mate, believe it or not. I advertised for a room-mate and got this bright, pleasant young lawyer. In his late thirties.”

  “Well this does sound interesting. I’ll have to meet him.”

  Clyde spoke matter-of-factly through a vacant smile, but he was quite taken aback. His father had a room-mate? Clyde did expect news of a girlfriend, thinking (as Orrin had said of Gail) what an attractive person his father could be. And with all of his clients women, in varying states of need and dependency …

  “He must be single?”

  “We are all single, my son. Though we join together in Holy Matrimoney, we do still remain single. But yes, Eli is a confirmed bachelor.”

  “You say that with a slight twist. Is he gay or something?”

  “No no. His last girl booted him out. That’s our common bond, you see.”

  “Come on, Dad, you can’t see it that way, can you?”

  “Oh who knows how to see anything. Let’s talk about you now, Clydie. I want all the latest news from inside the ivory tower. And Phyll is back—”

  “Yes I am. Free at last. I hope I didn’t miss anything good. Has Orrin reported on his self-analysis yet?”

  “What’s this, Dad?”

  “Actually, my dear, we’ve just finished talking about me. We’re onto you two now. But Clyde can fill you in later.”

  Next afternoon at The Club, Orrin was sitting with the medical crowd, Jaspers and Connoly and the young one with the aviator glasses, when he spotted Ted Neff shedding his coat in the foyer. Ted had seemed evasive of late, sliding away from conversations, though of course Orrin knew that was Ted’s way with everyone. As he watched Ted now, tacking backward past old Sarge, he realized that for the twenty-plus years of their friendship, Ted had been the very image of Man Backpedalling, the vanishing point of every picture.

  Poor Ted never had “time.” He spent much of his time strenuously protesting that he hadn’t any. And yet here he came, across the room full speed, hearty handshake pre-extended:

  “Orrin!”

  “A pleasant surprise,” said Orrin, referring to the surprise of Ted advancing on him.

  “I was hoping to find you here. We’re giving a party—general purposes—at the house on Saturday. Hope you can fit us in.”

  Party. The old crowd. Orrin enjoyed these occasions immensely, though he would never confess to such a thing. But what, he wondered, would the Neffs do about Gail?

  “Oh she’s invited too. Why not? If there’s a problem, you can work it out between yourselves. Or come together, to save on cabfare.”

  “I’d be delighted to come, Theo. And I hope Gail does too, I’d love to see her. Do you think she might?”

  “You want the truth, Orrin?”

  “Always,” he flatly stated. Then reduced it, when Ted looked askance, to, “Allright—usually.”

  “She asked May to let her know if you would be there.”

  “That’s clear enough, then.”

  Orrin kept a civil, disinterested face, though he felt hammered inside. Doubly so, for although Ted had come clean under cross-examination, he had clearly asked Gail first and pre-fabricated a plan of retreat with her.

  “Why not wait and see? I did let her know you’ve been on a good streak.”

  The instant Ted spoke, he knew he had spoken too much. An uncharacteristic mis-step, and now he could but flinch as Orrin flew back at him:

  “Good streak! The presumption!” But Orrin was sputtering a bit, giving Ted what little time he needed to regain his balance, re-align his spine. “What am I anyway, Theo—a pitcher? A designated hitter? That I should have slumps and good streaks!”

  “But of course you do, Orrin,” said Ted soothingly. “Don’t you know the first thing about yourself?”

  11

  Eli Paperman told Orrin of the experiment he once conducted, in an attempt to cram one hundred years of living into seventy-one years of life.

  Seventy-one, Eli explained, was the mean age of mortality among American males. It was when you expected to die. You could exceed the mean, of course—presumably half did—but might you not also beat the reaper at his own game (which was Time) by simply refusing to sleep?

  Because a year was not just a year any more than a kiss was just a kiss. It was also 8,766 hours. A typical good burgher aimed to sleep seven hours every night, often complaining of fatigue when he managed only six. Thus, according to Eli, the man was pissing away 2,555 hours a year with nothing to show for it.

  Eli had never consigned his own life away to such an extent. As a boy he feigned dependence on a night-light so that he could read to his heart’s content. At fifteen he was listening to late-night radio in his room, rhythm-and-blues from Oakland and the country stations emanating from Bakersfield. In college he tried to squeeze in three or four hours of sleep, using black coffee as a chemical backup.

  Then it occurred to him that by not sleeping at all, he could add thirty years to his allotment of seventy-one. Bingo. And so obvious. People were forever saying there was not enough time in the day, but the time was there, it was the people who weren’t. They were upstairs snoozing. Remove the time pressures of a family, mix in the hours usually squandered on sleep, and there would be time enough for a man to do everything he wished to do.

  “So what were the results of the experiment?” Orrin asked.

  “I got tired.”

  Eli confessed almost sheepishly to double vision, belly aches, and a dullness of mind that devalued the waking state. Sleep was apparently a necessity, like food. Research revealed that even Superman took his rest each night. So Eli had gone back to strong coffee and four hours, while retaining the basic premise: the less you sleep, the more you must be “living.”

  Such a man, with such an outlook, seemed wholly admirable to Orrin and quite unlikely to be found at home in the evening, watching the animals mate on PBS. Such a man would be abroad, ever on the go, early and late. It did also prove to be the case, however, that Eli had made a new friend.

  Her name was Marcy Green. Eli had neglected to mention her, perhaps thinking that she was not of direct concern to Orrin. (Because mere gossip did not interest Eli, he assumed it did not interest other men either.) But on the night when Orrin woke to the remorseless visage of Koppel, and on some of the subsequent nights where Eli’s quilts went unruffled, he had been ruffling the quilts at Ms. Green’s establishment over in Cambridge.

  Orrin learned of her existence when he took up Paperman’s offer to witness the law in action. In the two-hour hiatus between Alice Harris and Jane Liederman, he crossed the river by train and took up a pew at the Middlesex County Courthouse in East Cambridge. The neighborhood on one side of this dignified building had clearly not prospered, was barely surviving. On the other side of it, just as clearly, the land grab was on, and whole blocks were as devastated as a war zone, pending the latest phase of “development.”

  Inside, Eli was defending a group of protesters who had elected to recline on the broad entrance step of the Baker
Laboratory, where fearless amoral chemists were devising new recipes for deadly nerve gasses. This was the case Eli had described, in which free speech was only a pretext. The issue was bad press for Baker, to conduct some public heat toward their heretofore unpublicized dabblings and possibly restrain them.

  But Orrin had not really come for the issues, he had come to see some legal fireworks. To see Eli fire salvos of goodness and the evil scientists crumble under the moral force of them; to hear the wicked Attorneys For Nerve Gas chant patriotic gore in the background, like a Greek chorus. So he was a little disappointed by all the soft civil discussion between teams of young attorneys who clearly shopped for their suits together. Each team even featured two women in blue skirt-suits and Etonic running shoes.

  “Your Honor,” said Eli, in his closest brush with controversy, “these people are hardly criminals …”

  “A criminal act, however …” said the Judge, halfheartedly, as though cueing Eli’s lines at a slapdash rehearsal.

  “An act of civil disobedience …” responded Eli in this shorthand code they spoke, and he went on to list authors, teachers, and even nuclear physicists in the congregation. “There was no harm to anyone, and no threat of harm, until the police …”

  “Mr. Paperman …”

  Neither the Attorneys For Nerve Gas, who sought chiefly to keep all voices as low as possible, nor the J., who required only a superficial genuflection to the postulate that there were laws, protested when Eli proposed community service in lieu of punishment. Perry Mason this was not. Under a sleepy guarantee that there would certainly be sentences next time, the Baker 27 were set free.

  Marcy Green was one of them. Orrin had seen her in the dock, noticed her: intriguing titian tresses, serene hazel eyes, strong shapely calves. He noticed her merely as a connoisseur. When she broke her first smile, at the favorable ruling, he felt it logical to assume everyone in the room was noticing her, for the smile transformed her prettiness into beauty. And then this great beauty turned out to be, well, almost related.