The Bachelor

by Andrew Palmer

  Most days, the gunshots began to subside just as the wind began to rise. The latter arrived at the mountaintop daily neither at full blast nor in a gentle crescendo; rather, it announced itself with sudden, brief gales, some of them strong enough to knock you off balance, which interrupted intervals of relative calm that grew increasingly loud and portentous. If you were on the balcony, these gales were the signal to go inside. Close the doors over the pool if they’re open. Stuff folded up cereal boxes into the cracks between doors and windows, windows and floor. Make a bowl of pasta or a toasted cheese sandwich and take it to the bedroom to eat in bed while you watch a Bulls-Pacers playoff game and try to ignore the banging and shrieking coming at you from all six sides. There was no question of reading while the winds blew, much less of working on my Berryman project, which, if I were to do it justice, would require ultimate concentration. Because of this the coming of the winds coincided with a general ebbing of my scholarly efforts, as if the wind were blowing away the sense of purpose I had only just discovered, and so for the time being my biography would have to remain in its preliminary stages.

  The winds seemed to blow from all directions, due to what accidents of atmospheric conditions and topology I could never determine. I never got used to it, but I learned some coping mechanisms. Besides the cereal box trick, which really helped, the main one was going to bed early, with earplugs. Then, if I was lucky, the sounds would wake me only three or four times before dawn, by which point the winds had almost always subsided, at least a little. If I was unlucky, I’d be awoken seven or eight times, including once or twice by the alarm system Oscar had finally succeeded in installing.

  The alarm accomplished its purpose admirably. Every light in the house flashed on and off, to a just-out-of-rhythm accompaniment of a madly pulsating electronic honk that must have been audible throughout the valleys. The scene into which I awoke at these times was as terrifying as any nightmare. Usually the assault of sound and light would paralyze me in bed for several moments, until I gathered my senses and sprinted in my boxers to the garage, where I could enter in the code that ended it. Then the house would be all lit up, and silent. I’d call the alarm company on the newly installed landline, and the representative would ask if I’d like for him or her to stay on the line while I checked for intruders. Yes, I’d say, that would be nice, and I’d move slowly through each room of the house, checking closets and bathtubs and drawers until I could be reasonably sure I was alone. Then the representative would ask if I’d like the police to be notified, and I’d say that wasn’t necessary. I figured it would take the police at least an hour to get up there, plenty of time for an intruder to kill me and bury my body in the atrium or beneath the cantilevered pool.

  But the only intruders I ever saw—beyond the ubiquitous contractors, who continued to come up in a never-ending stream, making improvements to the windows, the floor, the plumbing, the peeling strips of wood on the eaves—were the flies that seemed to be breeding in the kitchen, the frogs that occasionally made slapping sounds in and around the atrium pond, the songbirds that entered through the opened pool doors (two sparrows and a yellow-breasted warbler of some sort), the juvenile red-tailed hawk that got stuck in the atrium for most of a misty night and day (a woman from animal control came up, tossed a towel over it, took it outside, and released it), the pair of mating quail that didn’t make it out alive, and the little clay-red and dusty green lizards that scuttled past my feet with increasing frequency. The motion-detecting cameras a little ways down the mountain picked up bobcats, coyotes, deer, foxes, and raccoons.

  It was during this period that I got an unsettling update about Maria. It came from Sadie—in an email, not a letter. She had recently arranged for a realtor to start showing her home, and she and Ryan had hired a stager to clean the interior and fill it with furniture. The day that the staging was set to take place, Sadie got a call. The staging team had found the house unlocked, and when they went inside they discovered someone there: a young, very thin dark-haired woman who appeared to be asleep on the living-room floor. She was surrounded, Sadie wrote, by empty and half-empty bottles of wine. When they woke her up, she claimed to live there; she was renting from the house’s owners, she said. No one was renting from her and Ryan anymore, Sadie told the man on the phone. He asked if he should call the police. No, Sadie said, she’d take care of it. She’d arrange for them to come back another day. She asked me in her email to drive into cell service and call her as soon as possible.

  On the phone, her voice was calm, but I could tell it held an anger.

  “What are you going to do? This is your problem.”

  I apologized several times. Maria told me she’d found a sublet, I said. I’d been under the impression that she’d moved out at the end of March, as she’d agreed to do.

  “She’s troubled. She’s clearly a very troubled person. I’m not about to kick her out on the street, but I’m also not interested in extending her any more charity than I already have.”

  I told Sadie I’d get in touch with her. I’d figure it out, I said.

  “Please do.”

  “I will. I promise. I’m really sorry.”

  “It disturbs me that you’d allow yourself to get involved with someone who exhibits this kind of behavior.”

  “Believe me, I had no idea.”

  “Do you know how stressful it is to try to sell a house without some transient squatting there?”

  I didn’t.

  “Of course you don’t. Of course you don’t. You’re a child. What do you know?”

  As soon as the conversation ended, I called Maria. She didn’t pick up. I left a message. I texted her: Please call. When after five or ten minutes I didn’t hear back, I called a mutual friend in New York. Jack hadn’t heard from Maria in a long time, but he was in touch with one of her housemates, he said. I told him they weren’t her housemates anymore but it might be worth trying to connect with them. Maybe, even if they hadn’t heard from her, they’d have her father’s contact information. After I hung up with Jack I didn’t know who to call. I sat there in Dave’s ridiculous Jeep, staring at a McMansion, trying to fend off a rising dread when I thought of someone else.

  “Didn’t expect to hear from you,” Jess said.

  I apologized for being so out of touch, said I would explain later, and asked if she’d be willing to do a weird but important favor.

  The house was locked and all the lights were off, she reported back twenty minutes later. There were no cars either in the driveway or on the curb in front of the house. I thanked Jess, who sounded annoyed, said we should catch up later, and hung up.

  The sky had begun to darken. It was almost seven, nine in Des Moines, ten in New York, for Sadie. My next move, I decided, was to call her back, to talk through possible next steps. It didn’t matter that she’d said this was my problem, it didn’t matter if it would make her more upset with me; I trusted her, more than anyone else I knew, to know what to do in a difficult situation. Still, I didn’t look forward to the talk. I decided to give it ten minutes. Fifteen. After twenty minutes I got a text. Maria: Driving to India—she could only have meant Indiana—talk tomorrow.

  I put my phone to sleep and cried for a minute, mostly out of relief, I think, but also worry, shame, regret, and more than a little anger. I wanted to do something for Maria, but what? I hoped she was okay to drive. I wondered what, besides the sublet, she had lied to me about. I thought about the changes I’d noticed in her since we renewed our correspondence, and about how much she liked to drink, and about how often she talked of escape, she was always escaping. (Did I recognize myself in the impulse? Was that part of our connection?) Why couldn’t she have texted or called or written about her mysterious sickness earlier than she did? (On the other hand, why hadn’t I followed up on my email after a few days?) If there was a perfectly good explanation for her long silence, why had she felt for such a lon
g time she couldn’t explain it to me? The caterpillar story, on reflection, was far-fetched at best.

  That night I got drunk for the first time since I’d come to California. I blasted alternative rock from my childhood, went for a probably ill-advised night swim, and sat in the hot tub in the violent wind, watching the red lights flash in the distance, until I got light-headed and went inside. I brought my laptop and another beer to bed, where I sat watching YouTube videos, first of Daniel Day-Lewis interviews and then of early Stones performances, Mick Jagger was a miracle of a man, the charisma, the squirmy joy. I checked my email, nothing new, found myself typing into a window I must have opened a moment before.

  ME: you up?

  The response was almost immediate.

  ASHWINI: hi it’s been awhile

  It was almost three a.m. in Halifax, but she often kept very late hours.

  ME: no kidding. how are you? how’s your semester going?

  ASH: i got fired

  ME: what really?

  ASH: for sleeping with a student

  ME: ha, right.

  ASH: hahahahahahaha

  ME: i liked your book.

  ASH: thx

  (I still hadn’t read her book.)

  ME: does it feel good to have it out there in the world?

  ASH: are you kidding

  it feels fucking terrifying

  ME: haha

  ASH: my dad’s reading it right now

  he’s going to hate it

  ME: you think?

  ASH: i killed off the dad in the book!

  ME: oh right, haha

  ASH: haha

  ME: remember when he told me i looked like robert redford?

  ASH: all white ppl look the same to him

  ME: ha

  ASH: ha

  how’s dm?

  ME: actually i’m in california. i’m housesitting a glass-walled hexagonal mountaintop mansion w/ wrap-around balcony, open-air atrium, hot tub, and indoor/outdoor infinity pool cantilevered over napa valley.

  ASH: when can i visit?

  ME: ummmm….

  ASH: relax i’m joking

  sounds like a nice gig

  you always seem to luck into nice situations

  ME: haha thanks.

  ASH: yr welcome

  ME: i mean, do you want to?

  ASH: hahahahaha

  ME: just a thought.

  i miss you.

  it’d be nice to see you.

  i’m sorry for how things ended.

  you there?

  ASH: are you drunk?

  ME: no.

  ASH: i appreciate the apology but i’m in a good place now

  as they say

  i’ve been seeing a therapist

  i started swimming

  ME: that’s really good to hear!

  i’m in a good place too.

  i’ve been swimming too.

  ASH: that’s great

  what you can’t swim.

  ME: i’ve been teaching myself.

  ASH: that’s great

  ME: so do you feel like you’ve been experiencing less anger than you were in the fall?

  ASH: excuse me?

  ME: nevermind

  ASH: i wasn’t angry, i was STRESSED

  i was starting a new very stressful job and editing proofs of my novel.

  ME: ok, sorry.

  i mean, you threw a chair.

  ASH: i accidentally tipped a chair over.

  ME: haha, right and broke a lamp

  ASH: i was upset and grabbed a chair and when i let go it fell over and hit the cord attached to the lamp

  ME: ok, we’ll go with that

  ASH: and what did you do that night?

  ME: i went for a walk

  ASH: you FLED

  and you weren’t there for me the rest of your time here

  ME: i wanted to be there but you wouldn’t let me.

  ASH: you CLOSED DOWN

  you stopped trying

  you’re unreliable

  and impatient

  and inconsistent

  ME: anything else?

  ASH: yes

  you’re always floating away

  you’re not able to deal with reality

  ME: i deal.

  ASH: someday you’ll have to face it

  someday you’ll have to come down from your castle

  ME: it’s a house

  ASH: and join the rest of us in the real word

  world

  ME: right.

  i’ll be sure to say hello if i ever go there.

  i want to end this conversation but no doubt you’d interpret that as proving your point.

  ASH: i don’t need you to prove my point

  you’ve already proven it to me.

  ME: well, nice chatting with you.

  ASH: :)

  ME: good night

  ASH: night

  I quit the browser, turned off my computer, and went out to the balcony. The wind hit me. The lights of Fairfield twinkled below. I closed my eyes, then opened them: the city was still there. I stripped off my clothes and dove into the water and stood on the floor of the pool for a long time. Finally I needed to breathe. The wind against my dripping face was painful. I stayed in the pool for a while, treading water. Why had I agreed to come back on this show?

  After the Final Rose

  Then came a departure.

  —John Berryman, “Dream Song 1”

  The Bachelor chose Emily. Her story was too good; the other bachelorettes never stood a chance. When he visited Emily in Charlotte on hometown week, he was very sweet to little Ricki. He gave her a kite. He understood Emily was a package deal. “Sitting here playing board games with Emily and her daughter was like the perfect image of what I want my life to be.” Riding elephants in the South African veldt next week was cool, but to the Bachelor the most important thing was Emily’s company. That night, in the Fantasy Suite high above the plains, she finally accepted her fate and told him she was falling in love with him. The next episode was the most emotional two-hour finale in Bachelor history.

  Thirty seconds later, a few months had passed, and Emily and the Bachelor were trying to explain to the host and studio and television audiences that yes, they were still together, contra the tabloids, though they had broken up once since filming ended and there was no wedding date. (Were they engaged? America wanted to know. He was pretty sure they were.) The trouble had begun when Emily saw the Bachelor on TV with all those other women. She couldn’t bear to watch him saying almost exactly the same things to them as he did to her. “Going through it, everything was so real to me,” she said, significant candles flickering in the background. “Watching it, I’m trying to figure out what’s reality TV and what’s my reality.” The Bachelor assured her: this wasn’t some fantasyland. Emily would always have his heart.

  By the end of the next month they’d broken up for good. Less than a year later she was the Bachelorette. Things didn’t work out with Jef with one “f,” the pompadoured, boyish CEO of a bottled-water company who beat out race car driver Arie in the two-hour finale, but she applied a lot of what she learned from that relationship to the one she’s in as I type these words, with a man she met while volunteering through her church as a teacher for a middle school jewelry-making class. Emily and Taylor’s engagement was brief; finally, Ricki has a father in her life.

  Emily isn’t the only bachelorette whose failure with the Bachelor made possible lasting love. Chantal, the runner-up, had already found her soul mate, a marketing consultant for a money management firm, by the time
“After the Final Rose” was filmed. Meanwhile, Ashley H., who came in third, beat Emily to the punch as Bachelorette, stepping out of one show and into another as if from dream to dream. Her season gave the franchise one of its few success stories, and ABC televised her wedding with the winner, kind-eyed construction manager J.P. Their first child, Fordham, was born two years later: 7 lbs, 2 oz; 18.5 in.

  Thus The Bachelor partakes of the eternal. It transcends history, politics, work, society, family, calendar time. Neither real nor quite unreal, it submits reality to formal pressures in order to forge new things, new feelings, then releases them into other worlds, where only usually do they dissolve.

  * * *

  —

  Sadie had volunteered to put me up in her guest room, I told Laura. It was July, and we were sitting on a couch in her gorgeous condo in the warehouse district of Minneapolis, sipping whiskey and admiring the view of the Mississippi from her living-room windows, which took up most of the north-facing wall and let in late afternoon bluish light. I’d spent the morning in the Berryman archives, my fourth day in the company of John and Beryl, and their story of love won and squandered was still running through my mind.

  “Do you really think that’s a good idea?” Laura asked. I’d been staying at her condo since I arrived in the city, but she’d been away the first two evenings and spent the third practicing a mournful, foreboding piece I didn’t recognize—she played the same phrases over and over—which turned out to be a suite by the twelve-tone Austrian composer Alban Berg.