Getting Started

After graduation I lived with my folks. My dad’s a contractor, and he got me this job with a friend of his. The guy was kind of a jerk, but it was OK. We were working on this housing development, and he was teaching me about electricity. I was hanging out with Louis, mostly. He lived in this little house that was practically out in the mountains, with his mother. There was this waterfall near his house where you could crawl back under the rock and behind the water and just watch it fall. When the sunlight would shine through it it was like the water was exploding, or like the light was exploding. It was really cool.

I did that for about six months. Louis had this girlfriend whose family gave her five thousand dollars when she graduated from high school. Louis said he was going to invest it for her, I guess in a new car for him, although he hadn’t gotten it yet. He had this old beat-up Honda Civic. Anyway, this girl’s brothers came around to Louis’ house with an ax, and they chopped up all four tires on his Honda, so he couldn’t leave. My dad had like five or six mounted tires in our garage. I don’t know where he got them. Anyway, I put four of them in the back of dad’s truck and went over to Louis’. We changed all four tires and Louis followed me home in his Honda. I left dad’s pickup in the driveway and then Louis drove me into Culpeper. After that I bought his car for $500 in cash. When I gave him the money Louis said “OK, if anybody asks you, you don’t know where I went.” Well, I didn’t, but I could guess that he took the bus into Washington.

Then about a week later the police came looking for me. They said Louis was going to be indicted for felonious conversion. They said they were going to charge me with being an accessory, but they didn’t. I didn’t know that he was going to be indicted when I bought his car, and I didn’t know where he’d gone. My dad was pretty mad, about the tires, I guess. He didn’t like Louis very much. Also, the cops were giving me a hard time. This old guy I worked with asked me if I wanted a job in Washington and I said sure, because it was like get out of town.

I knew some guys in Alexandria who had a house, and they let me sleep on their sofa for $25 a month. This job was on Capitol Hill, right near the Capitol, polishing railings. That was all it was. They have all these brass railings around the buildings, and this guy and I would polish them. I got $7 an hour, which was OK, but it wasn’t the greatest work. I’d watch all these girls go by, going to some air-conditioned office, while I was sweating my butt off. At nine o’clock in the morning it would be ninety degrees. Then the guy fired me. We didn’t get along. Also I didn’t always show up on time.

After that I didn’t work for awhile. It was pretty unstable where I was staying. We were up a lot at night so I slept most of the day. It was okay until my cash ran out. The guys I was living with started to give me a hard time, like this one guy didn’t want me to watch TV because I didn’t help pay for the electricity. Also they had these porno tapes that I couldn’t look at because they weren’t mine. This guy was a real pain. Then this oth-er guy told me about this job I could get with the law firm he worked for. He worked in the copying department, which was all these printers and stuff. It paid like $8.50 an hour because it was from two to ten, and there was a lot of overtime. Also it was air-conditioned, even though it was like in the basement of this big building.

So now I work at Culbertson and Manning. Jerome is the shift manager. He practically lives there, like he comes in around ten and leaves at midnight. He’s an older guy, about 30, a recovering alcoholic. He will always tell you that—“I’m a recovering alcoholic.” It’s a big thing with him. Jerome had to keep busy. He works like 80 hours a week, a lot of it overtime but some he doesn’t even get paid for. “It’s better than sitting at home, looking at Regis and Cathie Lee,” he says. Well, I guess.

I hang out with Jerome a lot now. A lot of times when we get off shift we drive around in this Ford Explorer he has, which is pretty cool. He’s got a 454 engine and these monster tires. Usually there are four or five of us, like the white guys. The black guys all think Jerome is a jerk, because he doesn’t do drugs. They think we’re all crackers. Anyway, it’s Jerome’s shift, and it’s mostly white guys. We can’t go to bars because of the alcohol. Usually we buy pizza and ride around. Jerome pays for everything because he likes having us with him. I don’t think we’re really screwing him. Jerome is kind of a maniac when he drives. He saw this cop video about this 15-year-old girl who was arrested for doing 110, so he always wants to do that. We go out on US 1 sometimes and he says he gets it up to 120. Well, I don’t know. The truck shimmies so much it’s hard to tell. When the windows start rolling down by themselves, he slows down a little. You have to wear a seat belt because of the way he bounces you around.

Once he went around a curve and the Ranger really swayed, and this guy in the back says “this motherfucker’s top heavy,” and Jerome says, “this truck ain’t top heavy, there ain’t nothing that will tip this motherfucker over,” and he goes around this next curve re-ally tight and we flip right over, wham! down this embankment and wham! right back on the tires again. So all this shit from the floor is all over us and I say “are we having fun yet?” That was pretty cool.

After I went to work at C&M, I started seeing this girl, Rosalie. She was going to be an actress. Well, that was what she said. She hadn’t acted in much. She used to be in these “Night of Mystery” parties, where these actors would go to a party and act out a mystery for the people at the party. She would tell me about all these rich married guys hitting on her. She wasn’t really that pretty. If you saw her, you wouldn’t think she was an actress. She lived in this house on Capitol Hill with these two gay guys, who were actors, Ralph and Bruno. Bruno was this little German guy. I was there once when he was all upset because this play he was in was reviewed in the paper and the reviewer said he looked like a rodent. I guess that would be limiting.

Rosalie was the first girl I had sex with. Later I found out it wasn’t as good as it should have been. I didn’t like her that much, really. She was kind of fat. I guess she liked me more than I liked her. She kept wanting me to move in with her. She slept on this futon in the basement. I couldn’t see that. I don’t think I was very good in bed, or on the futon. I’d go off pretty quickly. She’d say “that was great,” but I don’t think it was. After we did it a few times I didn’t want to do it any more. Rosalie would talk about stuff, like should she get a ring for her navel. Well, do it. Who cares? But she never did. Finally, we had a fight about it and we broke up.

Jerome was glad when we broke up. “Girls will fuck you up” he says. I don’t think Je-rome’s gay, but he’s like against women. “Women are fucking trouble.” “A man without a plan is not a man.” He likes to say that. “A man without a plan is not a man.” “What’s your plan, man?” I tell him “to keep this joint lit.” He doesn’t like that. He doesn’t like dope. “Zero tolerance, motherfucker.” He’s always telling us he’ll fire us if he catches us smoking pot. He thinks I smoke it all the time, but how can I, when I’m at work 10 hours a day and out driving with him until 4 in the morning? I tell him I’m going to buy a Jeep Wrangler, that’s my plan. They’re pretty cool. I like those rollbars they have, and those big tires. Jerome thinks it’s important for a young man to buy an expensive car. That’s what he calls me, young man. “A young man like you needs a real car, not that piece of shit you’re driving.” He tells me I need to work for a year at C&M and make a 50 percent down payment and the bank will give me a loan. He says he’ll help me. He wants me to get one with monster tires like his, which would be a couple of thousand extra. But I don’t want one of those really redneck trucks that cost like $40,000. Jerome says he can get me as much overtime as I want. Well, thanks, but I don’t want that much. I have almost $2,000 in the bank already. I do work Sunday overtime when we have it, because it’s double time. But I need to do more than work at C&M and party with Jerome.

After I broke up with Rosalie I started going to bars. First I have to get served, and then I try picking up a girl. Getting served is pretty cool. Usually I can get a beer but that’s it. I still look pretty young. I only need to shave like once a week. When we were in bed together Rosalie would call me babyface. Thanks a lot. What I like to drink is tequila, except I really don’t. If I have three I’m under the table. I’m not much of a drinker. A lot of times I’ll get served, and if there are no girls there I’ll leave. Getting served is what counts.

There are a lot of clubs around C&M that I can go to after work, like on a Friday or Saturday, if I’m working. Jerome gets pissed off if I go. Sometimes he’ll take us all out to dinner at a nice restaurant so we won’t leave him alone. But usually if it’s Friday or Sat-urday I’ll take off. Usually I take the Metro because my car really is a sort of a piece of shit. The tires aren’t all the same size, and they’re really bald, so I can’t get it through inspection. Also the transmission is shot. I don’t want to put a lot of money into it because I figure I’ll get my Wrangler in less than a year.

I don’t make it with girls much. I’m pretty shy. Also being a copy guy isn’t so cool. Once I was talking with this girl and she seemed to like me a lot. Then it turned out she thought I was a copier repair guy, like I went around to offices and fixed them. When she found out I just made copies she kind of deflated. I try to go to bars like around nine or ten. After girls have had a few drinks they don’t ask you as much about what you do.

Once I was in this bar which is up the street from C&M on Connecticut called Timber-lakes and I met this girl who was pretty gorgeous. She was older than me. They usually are. If I’m around Georgetown or GW it’s like “you don’t go to college?” I don’t need that. I started talking to this girl and I was telling her about going to the Bayou, which is this club near the river, to hear this band Brain Damage, because this guy I know from C&M is in the band. They’re sort of like Porno for Pyros. Well, sort of like them. She started telling me that she was a songwriter, and I was like, this is really cool, maybe she has a song that Brain Damage could do, so I’m asking her about who she likes and stuff like that. Then she told me that she tore up all the songs she wrote and I’m like why do that? Finally I left, and I thought, she doesn’t really write songs. She made that up to impress me. To impress me! I was already impressed. She was gorgeous. Everything about her was great, her hair, her clothes, her make-up. If you saw her on the street you’d think, well, if I had a girl like that, everything would be cool.

Since I broke up with Rosalie, I have slept with a few girls, like one-night stands. Girls are funny. They think my accent is cute. I have sort of a southern accent. This one girl told me I have a body like a Greek God. I don’t. I play in this zombie soccer league, which is like for guys who work second shift. Our games are like ten o’clock. I like to play, but I’m no Greek God. We don’t always play because guys don’t show up a lot. Jerome works out for an hour each morning before he comes to work.

He’s always talking about upper-body strength because his hero is Arnold Schwarzenegger. He’s seen “Terminator II” about a hundred times. Also he has this tape with “Bad to the Bone” on it. That’s his favorite song. He doesn’t know anything about music. Of course he hates hip-hop. He thinks the Spice Girls are hip-hop. I bought one of their tapes which I put on when he’s not looking, because he hates them so much. They’re not really a group.

Jerome gives me a hard time for being a vegetarian. “Real men eat meat,” he says. Like he’s really a tough guy. He doesn’t understand that everything has its own balance. A human being has one kind of balance and an animal has another. So if you eat an animal you upset your balance. Also violence upsets your balance. I guess I’m a pretty non-violent kind of guy.

I like going to girls’ apartments. I feel like I’m a spy. They always have nice places, like they’ll have plants in the bathroom. You should see the bathroom where I live. Girls have these magazines like Cosmopolitan and Elle about how to be gorgeous and drive men insane with desire. I read one that said you should always have lots of red things in your bedroom. Yeah, I guess that works. The best time I’ve had with a girl she wasn’t really a girl, I mean she was a woman. She was a lot older than me, like 30. I met her in this bar at Union Station. I was just having a beer. Her name was Sheryl. She was a school teacher from Colorado. I guess she thought I was funny, because she laughed at everything I said. We had a beer and she said “Why don’t you show me Washington?” She was laughing when she said it.

Anyway, we went on the Metro, which she hadn’t done before. We went over the Potomac, which she thought was neat, and then we went to the airport. They have this new building which I’ve been to a couple of times that has some pretty nice bars, where you can watch the river and the planes taking off. Also I usually get served there. We were talking the whole time. She knew a lot about music. When she was young she had gone to all these concerts, like the Grateful Dead like 15 years ago and the first three Lollapalooza tours. Also she’d spent a lot of time in San Francisco. She used to go to this club where the Red Hot Chili Peppers played before they became famous. She had this coupon for a restaurant on Capitol Hill so we went back there. After that we went back to her hotel room.

She was beautiful. She had a beautiful stomach and beautiful thighs and a beautiful crotch, just the way you want a girl’s crotch to be, with really thick pubic hair in this little triangle. But she was really flat-chested. In fact, she wore like falsies, I think, like her bra was sort of plastic. But that was OK, because the rest of her was so beautiful. I felt really peaceful when I was with Sheryl, not the way I was with Rosalie at all. I was always tense with her. I read this article once by a woman about how to give oral sex, like “the man in the little boat,” or “the little man in the little boat.” I can’t remember. Anyway, that’s the clitoris. So I thought I’d try it. I started licking her crotch along the line of her vagina, and I could see it open up. She started moaning and I kept licking and her vagina opened up more and more, and I could see her clitoris.

So I thought I’d try it. I started licking her crotch along the line of her vagina, and I could see it open up. She started moaning and I kept licking and her vagina opened up more and more, and I could see her clitoris. It was like it was a science experiment, because it happened just like the woman said in the article. I started licking her clitoris, really softly. I remember in the article the woman said that whatever you do you should keep on doing it, like everything should be very rhythmical. So I kept on licking and then she had an orgasm. She just drew her legs and her hips back. Later I told her I loved her be-cause she was bushy. I meant her crotch hair. I guess I must have blushed when I told her that because she laughed for about ten minutes. She was really beautiful. After that we made love like six times, almost all night. In the morning she told me she had to leave. I wanted to come out to Colorado to see her, but she kept saying no. I wouldn’t take the hint so finally she told me she was married. Thanks a lot! She was wearing this little gold ring that was set with emeralds. How was I supposed to know? I was like disappointed but not mad. I felt so great from having made love six times but now I wasn’t going to see her again. I just didn’t want her to go.

After I had sex with Sheryl I guess I thought I had women figured out, like I was cool, but it didn’t work out that way. The next time I was with a woman was this woman I met in this Irish bar on Connecticut Avenue called the Four Provinces. They have like Irish folk music and people dancing. It’s pretty cool. Anyway, I met this girl and we started talking. After about an hour she says to me “let’s go someplace quiet” and I said okay. I was kind of drunk because I had had a tequila shooter and a beer or two. We went to this other bar to have a glass of wine. I’m almost surprised they served me because I must have looked like this little drunk kid. Sometimes people don’t hassle you, which is nice. Anyway, we were talking, and all of a sudden she leans across the table and then all of a sudden we’re frenching. I was about to explode but then she started sucking on my lip, like she pulled it inside her mouth. It was weird but I didn’t care, because I was all ready to get laid. So we finished our wine and went back to her place and started making out. She was pretty sexy but she kept sucking on my lip until it was like bleeding. I don’t know what the fuck was wrong with her. Finally I couldn’t take it. We got into an argument and I was really pissed off because she was so weird. Also, I was really drunk. That pissed me off too. I knew I was going to be drunk for a long time, that I’d have to sleep it off, but I couldn’t exactly sleep with her. Finally I just went in the bathroom and locked the door and went to sleep in the bathtub. Then like five hours later I hear her beating on the door. She was really making a racket. She says “I want you out of my bathroom!” Well, I figured it was her bathroom, so I’d have to go, but I was really pissed. I was still drunk but I was hung over too. When I went outside I couldn’t tell what time it was. It was all gray out, kind of misty and really humid. She lived way up on Wisconsin Avenue. I started walking toward downtown and then I stopped at this bus stop. I waited for like half an hour but no bus came, so I started walking again. Then it started raining, and by the time I got to the next bus stop I was soaked. I stayed inside this little shelter. Finally a bus came and I got on it. I was all wet and steamy and sleepy. I felt like I was a bum. I got off in Georgetown and walked across Key Bridge to Rosslyn and caught the Metro back to my place. That was the pits.

Since that happened I haven’t gone out as much. I feel like someone gave me a di-amond and then they took it back, and now I don’t know how to get one for my own. I think about Sheryl a lot. I guess I shouldn’t but I do. It was just one night but I really miss her smile and her laugh. I’m not sure if I should stay in the city. I like DC okay but I miss the country sometimes too. But I figure that when I get my Wrangler I’ll be more organized. Like, if I meet this girl and she eats my lips off, I won’t have to walk home.

©Copyright Alan Vanneman 2011

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Dinner at Our House

Dinner at our house didn’t go exactly according to plan. I enjoy having parties, and for the last seven years we’ve been having regular gettogethers “for the arts.” Ginnie says I’m a bit of a troublemaker but that’s not so. I love music, and I love people, and most times they go together, though not always. Ginnie says I push things. It’s her house, or her money at least, so I can’t cross her too directly. We live in Baltimore, on the fringe of Hopkins, in a beautiful old house overlooking Thompson’s park, with a real music room and a rosewood grand piano. I feel I’ve been given a lot, and I should give back to the community. Ginnie feels I like to make trouble, but I don’t, not really.

Ginnie likes to remind me of the time I made some remarks about Harry’s wife that I probably shouldn’t have, and Harry decked me. Apparently I performed a perfect back flip. I can’t vouch for that, because I didn’t see much. I remember coming to on the floor and Ginnie leaning over me saying “Are you hurt?” and me saying “Yes, I’m hurt,” and her saying “No, I mean are you really hurt?” and me saying “No” and her saying “Good, because I haven’t laughed this hard since Hogan’s Heroes went off the air.” But that incident was atypical. I mean, it was really atypical.

Once a month we have a group over for a night of music. Music’s the main thing, though the dinner’s important as well. You wouldn’t guess to look at her, but Ginnie’s Polish, Polish all the way through, and she likes to help students. I say I like to help students too, and most of the time she believes me. I do like the musicians. There’s such a horrible pressure on them, to be a genius. Does anyone deserve such a burden? I don’t think so. I’m a psychologist, dealing from nine to five with middle-class trauma. There’s nothing to write a book about. My patients are afraid to fly, afraid to succeed, afraid to fail. Mostly, they’re afraid. And yet, what do they have to worry about, really? Nothing. Think of a poor musician, out there with nothing between you and ignominy but your ten little fingers or your vocal chords. A hangnail or a coldsore can cost you a scholarship. So I like to provide young people with an audience. And besides, I love being able to listen to live performances of fine music in my own home. Is that so bad?

That evening we had the usual crowd overway too many psychologists in their forties, but what can you do? Jan and Joe, Arnie and Amy, Bob and Brenda. I swear I didn’t plan it that way! They’re Ginnie’s colleagues, every one. She teaches at Hopkins, in psychology, of course. I’m desperate for variety, and some-times that’s my undoing. Leopold can be counted on to make a little trouble. Leo-pold and Janice. Leopold’s a violinist with the symphony. He’s in his late forties, very Polish, and an incredible roué. The man will not leave women alone. Janice tolerates it, somehow. Their children, David and Alice, are angels. Our two, Brian and Bobby, ages 11 and 13, are oafs in comparison. David and Alice enjoy classical music. They have manners. Manners! I’m sure Brian and Bobby don’t regard me as human. They don’t treat me as human. The way they look at me, I think they’d be delighted to trade me for a full set of Game Boy cartridges and an SUV. So long, Dad! But David and Alice are angels. I’ve often wondered how I could invite them over without their parents. I can’t do that. I need Leopold for his contacts. When he isn’t grabbing the women, he has a very good ear for the music business. Compulsive father, shrinking mother, perfect children. You figure it out.

Our guest for tonight is male, fortunately, which makes me feel easier about inviting Leopold. Rafael is from Uruguay. How can you not help a violinist from Uruguay? I almost feel like telling Ginnie this is proof of the nobility of my intentions, which it damn well is. I don’t want trouble, I want entertainment.

Grushenka is fine for entertainment. She’s my age, early forties, very very Polish, and prone to fainting spells when standing near young men. She falls two or three times a night. Half the time they’re so slow on the uptake they just let her drop, but she doesn’t mind. She’s thankful for the trip. Good old Grushenka. Sometimes she’s a little too much of a comfort. When you start to wonder if you shouldn’t slow down on your drinking, you can always tell yourself that you’re not having as much as Grushenka, and that’s too easy.

We had young people over too, of course, mostly Poles, but also some Hungarians, mostly in the arts. They’re very European. They dress entirely in black, and smoke like chimneys. Usually they’re connected to Theatre Arts at Hopkins. It makes for some balance, so our poor artiste isn’t out there entirely on his lonesome with a bunch of geezer psychologists.

We had Maurice and Connie over that night as well. I suppose I wasn’t as up on things as I should have been. I had heard that Connie was getting restlessand looking at Maurice it was hard to blame herand I felt they needed to get out. People shouldn’t let their problems fester. Ginnie says I like to preside at divorces, but that’s not so. There’s nothing so feeble as an untested virtue, I like to say—I don’t know where I picked that up but it’s very true. If a divorce is hovering in the wings of our little circle, it has to be faced. Someone has to take charge of things, and encourage resolution. Liquor, I’ve found, is a psychologist’s best friend in these matters.

When Maurice and Connie showed up, Connie looked like she wanted a drink and Maurice looked like he needed one. Perhaps I was a little heavy-handed. I have a great affection for both of them. Connie is a charming woman with excellent breasts, who deserves to get the best out of life. And Maurice, Maurice has hidden depths. Connie did marry him, after all. He needs to be more forthcoming. So perhaps I was a little heavy-handed. I like for people to have a good time. And the evening went really well, too. The Hungarians brought goulash, and Rafael played with commendable brio. Leopold gave him several names, and even agreed to write him a letter of recommendation. Leo doesn’t do that for male musicians. Good food, good drink, good friends, and great music. Is there anything wrong with that?

But then around midnight I noticed that Connie had been monopolizing Rafael for about half an hour. By twelve fifteen they were playing footsie; by twelve thirty they had segued into kneesie; and by twelve forty they were working on thighsie. I’ve never seen a public double helix like that. I went out in the kitchen for another drink, and by the time I got back they were gone.

Where was Maurice? He materialized five minutes after his wife left. He’d been in the bathroom for half an hour. Once I realized what had happened, I was half-hoping that Maurice would go quietly, but he looked so forlorn I couldn’t ease him out. We sat in the kitchen until half past three, talking about the revival of Showboat. I asked him if he cared for breakfast, and when he said yes I served him an order of sausage and eggs.

He took it out to the dining room to eat, which turned about to be a bad idea. Leopold was there. Still! He’d been chasing this one Polish girl all night and ob-viously hadn’t met with any success. He started commiserating with Maurice, which of course was exactly what Maurice didn’t want to hear. I tried to intervene, verbally, I mean, but it was no go. Maurice rose heavily from his chair and started lumbering toward Leo. I figured anyone could take Maurice, so I started grappling with him. Unfortunately, “anyone” didn’t include me. He practically carried me with him on his back, and landed on Leo. The three of us struggled back and forth for a few minutes. I felt a slow but irresistible surge of power from Leo. We were rolling backwards, and I was on the bottom of the pile. I put my hand out, a bad idea under any circumstances, and it slid between the kitchen door and the jamb, right above the hinge. Leo and Maurice kept on coming. There was a resounding crack, and a hideous gasp from me, which Leo and Maurice were too drunk to hear. Finally they rolled off me and I tried to get up. My whole arm was in agony.

“Ginnie!” I bellowed. She’d retreated to the bedroom, but came running.

“I’m really hurt,” I said, as our eyes met.

“This is terrible,” said Leo. “Look, the bone is protruding from the flesh.”

I didn’t need to hear that.

“I can’t move my arm,” I said.

“I will help you,” said Leopold.

I didn’t particularly want his help, but the others were just standing there. He grabbed my arm and slid it upward. I thought the pain had sobered me, but at the first touch this wild spasm went through me and I gave a terrific shout.

“Open the door,” cried Maurice.

“It is open,” said Leo.

“No, I meant open it more.”

“Let Ginnie do it,” I gasped. “It’s her fucking door.”

Usually I don’t say “fuck.” I reserve for times of extreme stress. This was one of those times.

Ginnie extracted my arm, as I knew she would. It throbbed with pain, and my hand literally felt as though it would fall off, as if the joint was so shattered that only my skin was maintaining the connection.

“We’ve got to get you to the emergency room,” Ginnie said.

“I will drive,” said Leopold. “I insist.”

“We should call an ambulance,” said Maurice, looking miserable. I couldn’t blame him. He wasn’t having a very good night.

“Let Ginnie drive,” I said.

We started on our journey, to be interrupted by Brian and Bobby, who had to see what was happening. Ginnie gave them a short lecture—“Daddy has a compound fracture”—and sent them back to bed. Fortunately, they were too sleepy to care. Then we were on our way.

The next three hours, at the emergency room, were, if not actual Hell, then the bottom rung of Purgatory. The Emergency Room at Hopkins had two life-threatening cases ahead of me, which meant that a mere fracture had to wait. They gave me some demerol, when what I needed was oblivion. Then they fitted me with some sort of inflatable cast that more or less immobilized my arm, as well as protecting my hand.

“Isn’t this marvelous,” said Leo. “American technology.”

I was on the verge of saying something along the lines of “Yes. Thank God we’re not in Poland,” but I bit my tongue. Witticisms at the expense of one’s guests, even guests like Leo, are not appropriate. Once the cast was on, Maurice decided to soothe my nerves by reading to me from Wordsworth—In Memoriam, or In Requium, or In something. Why he had it with him, and why he thought it appropriate, I can’t imagine. I tried to signal to Ginnie to shut him up, but she was in one of her “you made your bed, now lie in it” moods, and once she gets in one of those she rarely budges. Leopold, after checking out the nurses, was reading a copy of American Fiddler.

As we sat there, the pain, the exhaustion, the Wordsworth, and the twin smells of disinfectant and blood began to have an effect on me, or rather my belly. I’d had a refresher on the goulash around midnight along with a glass of burgundy, and the two bourbons I’d had on top of that, not to mention the second-hand smoke I’d inhaled from a hundred Galoises, weren’t doing me any good. I should have just asked for a basin, but somehow the thought of puking in public, particu-larly in front of Ginnie, was too much to be borne.

“I’m going to the men’s room,” I announced, struggling to my feet.

“I will go with you,” said Maurice, still clutching his Wordsworth.

I took one step and started to fall, which roused Leo from his Fiddler.

“I will help you,” he said.

Ginnie offered as well, of course, but I urged her to stay put. I wasn’t at all sure that I was going to make it to the men’s room, and I didn’t want to end up puking on Ginnie. My feelings toward Leo and Maurice at this point were less scrupulous.

I know I’ll never get credit for it, but that walk to the men’s room was really one of my finest hours. My arm was throbbing like hell with every step, and we weren’t half way across the waiting room before I could taste that goulash, and it was ripe. As a kid I always hated puking. I admit that I got more familiar with the process in high school and college, but by the time I got my doctorate I considered myself a mature drinker. I hadn’t heaved in a decade, and I’d forgotten just how nauseating nausea can be. But I clamped my teeth and kept on walking, feeling just a little like the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae or maybe Alec Guinness at the River Kwai.

The goulash was backing up into my sinuses when Maurice and Leo eased me into the handicapped stall. I sank to my knees and grasped the porcelain with my right hand. The first three or four retches weren’t so bad. Unfortunately, that was only the beginning. The first retches emptied me out, but they also reactivated that pool of pain in my left armpit. Never has my poor body worked at such cross-purposes. My gut seemed to think that because nothing was coming out, it needed to try harder. Each spasm sent a burst of pain screaming through my armpit. The harder I tried to keep from retching, the more violent the spasm would be when it finally did come. As I sat there I hoped that Leo and Maurice were feeling good and guilty for what they had done. I remember thinking that maybe they would feel so bad they would chip in and buy me one of those Plymouth Prowlers as a get-well present, which gives you an idea of how far gone I was. Even the fact that Maurice’s marriage was falling apart gave me surprisingly little comfort.


It took a good solid hour for my body to realize that it was empty. I staggered upright, feeling worse than ever. Maurice and Leo more or less carried me back to the waiting room. Ginnie, who had received several updates from Maurice, was reading Wordsworth.

“How do you feel?” she asked.

“Better,” I lied. We Carrigans bend, but we don’t break. And sometimes we don’t even bend.

I had to wait another hour before I finally got to see a doctor. “That’s a nasty break,” he told me, as the nurse took off the cast. “No shit,” I wanted to say, but I couldn’t find the words.

I was on my feet and out of the hospital by noon. Nobody wants to stay in a hospital but somehow you always feel hurt when they ask you to leave. Ginnie’s sleepy, amused face greeted me as I tottered into the waiting room. Maurice and Leo had departed. She’d left hours ago to give the boys breakfast, but now she was back.

“This is what they call schadenfreude,” she told me as she took my arm.

“Schadenfreude” is German, and it means “pleasure or happiness at the misfor-tune of others.” Europeans think this is funny.

“How is Maurice?” I asked. “Is there any word from Connie?”

“Why do you care?”

“I care because I care,” I said, defensively.

It was an honest answer. Poor Maurice! With the pain in my arm under control I was starting to feel sorry for him again. He would be my next project, and a real challenge. Connie would be easier. She wouldn’t get far with Rafael, of course, but she’d get somewhere with someone. Maurice was the real problem, definitely a long-term case. Fortunately, he was young, still in his late thirties, with a decent career. He had to hold onto the career while the healing took place. He needed to take himself in hand. He’d been letting himself go. Connie’s departure, unfortunately, was just the kind of shock he needed. The trick was to prevent him from luxuriating in his sorrow. Somehow, I suspected that being a professor of Romantic Poetry offered more temptation for that sort of thing than was good for Mau-rice. He needed something more than his work, but that something was not a doomed, desperate, self-pitying romance with an unhappy divorcee or confused graduate student. Despite his forlorn, pear-shaped figure, Maurice had charm, or at least tenure, and what in academia is more charming than that? I sighed. Maurice had substance, but he was a very, very long-term project.

“Why are you sighing?” Ginnie asked.

“I’m in pain,” I said.

“If only that were true,” she remarked.

© Copyright Alan Vanneman 2011

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Stan the Man

“There’s one, mommy,” said Nancy, pointing.

“Where?”

“Right there! It’s huge! It’s moving.”

Janet nodded eagerly, stepping from the rocks into the deep water in her waders.

“Wow! She’s a big one, all right,” she said. She bent over in the water and slid the steel bar she carried under the abalone’s foot.

Amy winced. She was a long way from kosher, but the grisly appetites of the gentiles still gave her the creeps. Why would anyone want to eat such a thing? She made herself not look away, so that no one would notice.

“Aaron, stand back!” she commanded her five-year-old son.

“He’s not in the way,” Janet responded cheerfully.

Amy took her son’s arm nonetheless. His fascination with the strange creatures Janet Kendall dredged from the sea bothered her. She knew there was nothing she could do—summer vacations by the sea with his gentile friends meant everything to Bernie—but she couldn’t help resisting.

There was a long pause while Janet reached her hand into the cold water.

“Did you get him?” called Ann from the shore, where she and Harriet stood guard over the younger children.

“She’s coming right up,” replied Janet, ignoring the confusion of pronouns. Abalones were always female to her until proven otherwise. With her right hand she rotated the bar, turning it gently to avoid tearing the abalone’s flesh. When it loosened she straightened and held the shell aloft in triumph.

“Let me see it, mommy,” said Nancy, as her mother clambered awkwardly towards the rocks.

Aaron strained towards Nancy, despite his mother’s warning grasp.

“It’s time to go, Aaron,” said Amy sharply. “I don’t want you to fall in.”

“I won’t fall in,” he said.

“You come along,” she said, seizing on his defiance as a valid excuse to drag him away from the disgusting creature that Nancy held in her hands. Giving such a thing to a child!

Janet looked away, out into the ocean. She was so protective of Aaron!

“Look, mommy!”

Nancy was pointing again.

Janet turned and looked. Imagine, a large market crab, just sitting there! Beautiful! She straightened and turned towards the shore.

“We need the net,” she said.

Harriet, her sister-in-law, ran out along the rocks with the long, wooden-handled crab net and passed it to Janet. Janet took it and twirled it expertly over her head. Then she began her gentle advance on the crab, her feet treading carefully on the rocky sea bottom to avoid startling her quarry. Nancy, to Amy’s dismay, ran along the rocks back to the shore, bearing the abalone, which she showed to Aaron.

“It’s a girl,” she said, turning the shell upside down to show Aaron the green crescent. It was, in fact, the creature’s genitals, but fortunately neither Nancy nor Amy knew that.

Aaron stared, fascinated.

“Those are her eyes,” said Nancy, confidently, pointing to the stalks.

“Let me have it,” said Harriet. She didn’t know anything about keeping kosher, but she did know that lots of people did not like to look at abalones, and that Amy was one of them.

“I’ll take it,” said Ann. “Look, Greg, a great big snail!”

She held it out to her three-year-old son Greg, who stared solemnly at the beast. Nancy giggled.

“He doesn’t know what it is,” she said.

“Well, he’s only three,” Ann said. “He isn’t grown up like you.”

There was a sudden explosion as Janet swung the net high above her.

“Got him!” she cried.

Amy winced. More shellfish! And this time with claws!

“I’ll take him back to the house,” Janet said. “He’s a big one.”

She reached to grab the netting and twisted it around, looking at the crab’s lower shell.

“Yeah, he’s a male,” she said.

“Maybe Aaron would like a fig bar,” Harriet said, handing Amy a paper bag. Poor Amy! She was so squeamish!

“He’s fine,” said Amy.

“I want a fig bar,” said Catherine, Nancy’s four-year-old sister.

“Everyone can have a fig bar if they want one,” said Harriet.

Amy relented, and the three women passed out fig bars to Nancy, Catherine, Aaron, and Greg, and to Amy’s two-year-old Miriam and to Harriet’s four-year-old Joe and two-year-old Luke. Janet, the crab net resting on her shoulder like a rifle, began walking back to the beach house.
“I’ll go with you, mommy!” cried Nancy.

“You stay with your little sister,” Janet replied.

Nancy took Catherine’s unwilling hand.

“You have to do what I say,” Nancy told her sister. Catherine, stuffing the fig bar in her mouth, did not respond.

Ann smiled. Nancy was so bossy. When she was a girl, she had had an older sister just like that.

“Don’t you want the abalone?” she called to Janet.

Janet slapped her forehead like a comic in a movie.

“Yes!” she shouted.

“Mommy, can I have the net?” called Nancy.

“No, I can’t handle the crab without something to put him in. We should have thought of that before. Look for abalone but don’t go in the water. It’s much too cold.”

“Well, how can I look when you’ve got the iron?”

“Then come get it.”

Nancy sprinted forward.

“She has to do everything, doesn’t she?” said Harriet, taking Catherine’s hand.

“She gets it from her father,” said Ann.

“Gets what?” asked Aaron.

“She’s bouncy, like Tigger,” said Harriet, who knew Aaron liked Winnie the Pooh.

Nancy returned, waving the iron proudly over her head.

“Let’s find some abalone,” she said.

The children were all napping in the Kendall’s cottage, except Nancy, who was reading. The four mothers sat on the porch. They all smoked except Amy. Bernie told her it was terrible for your teeth, and anyway it was a terrible waste of money.

Janet pointed to a frigate bird, soaring high in the sky.

“Look at him! Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be that graceful?”

Ann laughed.

“You wouldn’t get much rest.”

“He isn’t working. Look at the way he soars.”

“Do you think Mark is serious about politics?” Harriet asked.

“I’m afraid he is. Can you stand it? You may want to get some new friends.”

“You know Danny will do anything Mark wants.”

Janet drank some iced tea and looked at the sky. Mark wanted so much. She liked things as they were, but she knew they were going to change. Mark wouldn’t be happy unless they did. He wanted to take risks.

“He’s too late this year, fortunately. Anyway, he’s sure Ike is going to win. It’s not a good year for Democrats.”

“Harry keeps telling him that,” Ann said.

“I know he does! Thank god for Harry!” Janet laughed. “We’re safe for two years!”

“Mommy, I’m hungry,” said Joe, approaching Harriet.

“Joe! Go back to bed! You’ve hardly been asleep at all.”

“But I’m hungry!”

“You can eat in half an hour. Now, come along.”

Harriet rose and took Joe by the hand, escorting him back into the cottage.

“Aaron’s getting so tall,” said Ann, unexpectedly.

“He’s just been growing and growing!” said Amy. “Taller than all his cousins!”

That wasn’t entirely true, but it might as well have been, since the only cousins that were taller than Aaron were older.

“I was always such a shortie when I was young,” said Ann. “Then I shot up when I was fifteen.”

“Are they all sleeping?” Janet asked Harriet when she returned.

“Sound asleep,” she said.

“Mommy, can I pound the abalone?” asked Nancy, appearing from inside the cottage.

“No, it would make too much noise. Besides, you’re supposed to be resting.”

“I’m not tired.”

“Read a book.”

“I’ve read all the books.”

“Don’t whine, Nancy,” said Janet, with a touch of sharpness.

“Nancy, I think we’ve got some National Geographics at our cottage,” said Ann. “Would you like to look at those?”

“Yes!” said Nancy, delighted.

“Well, come on. We’ll go get them.”

The three women watched as Ann walked with Nancy across the sand.

“How does she do it?” said Janet, mischievously.

She laughed easily at her own joke, winking at Harriet. Amy flushed just a little, but joined in the laughter as well. The four women were all within two years of each other, but Ann looked five years younger. She was taller by two inches, and had thick, lustrous hair that Amy envied deeply. She had long, graceful legs, no belly at all, and no varicose veins. She tanned easily, and didn’t freckle.

“Danny’s lucky,” said Harriet, and the women laughed again, Amy joining in the laughter rather than responding to the joke. She thought Ann was proud. She thought Janet was wild. She liked Harriet. Harriet was simple, and straightforward, and strong, and she liked to sing. Amy always wished that she could sing.



“It’s daddy!” shouted Nancy, pointing to the boat. “It’s daddy, Cathy! Come on!”

Nancy took her four-year-old sister by the hand and started to run.

“Let go of your sister,” said Janet, grabbing their joined hands. “She’s just a little girl. She can’t run as fast as you.”

“Mommy!”

“You should know better, Nancy.”

“Mommy! I want to see daddy!”

“Well, go see him. Cathy’s going to stay here with the rest of us.”

Cathy stared silently upwards at the two contending figures. Nancy looked around the crowd of women and children.

“Come on, Aaron!” she called.

She raced off towards the dock. Aaron struggled to match her pace.

“She loves Aaron,” said Janet, laughing again.

Amy was silent again. She watched her son running and sometimes stumbling over the sand, vainly trying to keep up with Nancy. She was just like her mother, both wild.

“She can go forever,” said Harriet.

“She gets all that height from her father,” Janet said. “I worry she’ll be too tall.”

Nancy ran across the sand to the dock. She leaped down onto the sun-dried wood with a satisfying smack. Daddy’s boat was still far in the distance, just passing through the breakwater half a mile off shore. The tide was starting to come in, and she could hear the big waves boom as they hit the wet, black rocks.

Instead of running to the end of the dock, Nancy waited for Aaron. She leaned against one of the pilings and watched tiny fish approach and nibble on the algae that grew on the wood.

“You made it!” she cried, as Aaron joined her.

“Yeah,” said Aaron.

“Look at the fish. Aren’t they beautiful?”

Aaron looked. Nancy said everything was beautiful. But she had such sharp eyes.

“Let’s run!” announced Nancy.

“Let’s look at the fish,” said Aaron, putting his hands on his knees.

“They’re just minnows,” said Nancy.

“Take my hand, Aaron,” announced Amy, arriving with two-year-old Miriam in her arms.

The boat whistle tooted as the boat passed through the breach in the rocks. As it turned towards the beach Amy could see the four husbands waving.

“Yay!” cried Nancy.

She flew to the end of the dock. Aaron pulled silently on his mother’s hand.

“No,” she said. “We’ll wait until everyone else gets here.”

She couldn’t trust herself to handle both a two-year-old and a five-year-old alone. She could swim. There was that to be thankful for. Growing up in Chicago, she was used to water. She had been on a boat, and Lake Michigan was an awfully big lake. But it wasn’t the sea. The sea was bigger, unconfined. One woman on a dock with two children wasn’t enough. And she couldn’t handle Nancy at all.

“Do you see some fish, Aaron?” asked Janet.

Aaron pointed silently.

Miriam squirmed in Amy’s arms.

“Put me down, mommy!”

Helplessly, Amy released Aaron’s hand and stabilized Miriam.

“Put me down!” Miriam cried again.

Janet took Aaron by the hand. Aaron was such a quiet boy. His face was so quiet, so gentle.

The two women began walking towards the end of the dock. Ann and Harriet arrived after them, Ann with three-year-old Greg and Harriet with four-year-old Joe and two-year-old Luke.

As the boat floated parallel to the dock Harriet’s husband Danny ran forward and cast a rope over a piling. Janet’s husband Marcus, Danny’s brother, cut the engine and stepped forward to turn the wheel. At the rear of the boat Ann’s husband Harold looped a rope over a second piling. The boat was secure both fore and aft and its hull brushed against the old tires that hung from the side of the dock. Danny and Harold leaped from the boat onto the wooden planking. The boat drifted sideways towards shore with the current and the rope at the stern went taut. Marcus pulled on the rope and the boat swung towards the dock. He and Harold secured the stern with a second rope while at the bow Danny tossed a rope to Amy’s husband Bernie, who wrapped it three times in a figure eight around a large cleat fixed to the deck. Danny leaped back into the boat and disappeared into a small cabin.

Bernie was nervous about the way they left him alone at the bow, but, if he knew what he was doing, he didn’t need any help. He waited for a moment to be absolutely sure that the rope was tight. The boat bumped easily against the dock. Behind him, he saw and heard Marcus jump onto the dock. Then the boat must be secure. He gave one last tug on the line, something he saw Marcus do on occasion, and jumped on the dock as well.

“What did you catch, daddy?” asked Nancy.

“Bernie caught a shark!” Marcus said, grinning broadly. He was a tall man, six three, and he towered over the others.

“A big shark?” asked Nancy.

“Pretty big. More than three feet. We had to shoot him, he was jumping around so much.”

“You had to shoot him! Aaron! Your daddy caught a shark and they had to shoot him!”

Aaron flushed with embarrassment at Nancy’s enthusiasm. Marcus disappeared into the boat’s small cabin.

“Here he is,” he said, holding the sleek, torpedo-shaped fish by the tail.

“Look at him!” said Nancy.

“A Mako,” said Janet.

“How do you know that?” asked Aaron.

“They’ve got the short fore fins,” said Marcus, giving one of the fins a tug. “Blues have big fins.”

Marcus held the shark’s head up. Aaron and Nancy stared at the devilish mouth and the vicious little teeth. Amy bit her lips convulsively. She had never seen such a hideous fish. Sharks and guns, and her Bernie in the middle of it. What he wouldn’t do for his goyish friends!

“Are we going to eat him?” asked Nancy.

“He’s too tough,” said Marcus. “Besides, we’ve got something better.”

He disappeared into the cabin again and brought out an enormous salmon.

“Coho!” exclaimed Janet.

“Wow!” said Ann. “Wow!”

“Took me almost half an hour to pull him in,” said Marcus, beside himself with pleasure. “He’d have snapped the line in a second if I hadn’t played him.”

Janet patted the fish.

“Beautiful,” she said.

“We found a market crab and three abalone, daddy,” said Nancy.

“Is it a big one?” asked Harold.

“It’s really big,” said Nancy.

“It’s not that big, Nancy,” said Janet.

“Big enough, I’ll bet,” said Harold.

“Did you catch anything else?” asked Harriet.

“A couple of blues,” said Danny, “but they were pretty small. They were still hopping when Mark caught the Coho, so we tossed them back in.”

The assembled families began walking back to the beach house.

“Can I carry the shark, Bernie?” Nancy asked.

Harriet laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Nancy demanded.

“Nothing.”

Nancy could see that Harriet’s eyes were shining, and so were her mother’s. She knew it wasn’t nothing. When grown-ups said it was nothing, it was always something. But she didn’t know yet what it was.

“You can carry the shark if you want to,” said Bernie.

Nancy took the shark gratefully in her arms, cradling it like a baby, so that she could see its teeth and cold, black eyes.

Did he try to bite you?” she asked.

“He was snapping like a son of a bitch,” laughed Harold.

“Harold!”

Ann was furious.

“You shouldn’t let him drink on the boat like that,” she told Marcus.

“I wasn’t drinking,” said Harold. Damn it. Damn it to hell, he thought.

“He was a mean shark, but your daddy pulled him in,” said Marcus.

“In the war, they used to catch sharks for their liver,” Janet said. “Shark liver was going for five dollars a pound.”

Nancy made a face.

“Shark liver! Ugh! Do you like shark liver, Aaron?”

“No,” said Aaron.

“Shark liver oil is good for you,” Janet said.

“Shark liver oil!” cried Nancy.

“We’ll give you some when we get home,” said Marcus.

“Daddy!”

Marcus grinned. She was playing to the crowd, just a little. Nancy was such a trouper. She didn’t know she was covering for Harold. Son of a bitch! It was over the line, sure, but it was funny. Harold was like that. Ann had to get used to it. Harold had balls, and she knew it. But not around the children. She had that attitude, and she wouldn’t quit on it.

Marcus flushed, just a bit, beneath his tan. Christ, he would like to loosen her up. Last year, when they were on the boat, she had been bending over in her bathing suit, and he had seen a pubic hair. He was in his bathing suit too and it made him so hard he jumped overboard and damn near froze. Christ!

“What are we going to do with the shark?” asked Janet.

“I don’t know. Stuff him? Do you want him on your wall, Bernie?”

Bernie chuckled to himself. What does a Jew do with a shark? Make a suit? He laughed.

“I’ll hang him in the office,” he said.

“I don’t like those eyes, staring at you,” said Ann.

“Do you think daddy should put the shark in his office?” Bernie asked Aaron.

“Sure.”

“Then it’s settled.”

“We’ll freeze him,” said Janet.

“Look at his teeth,” said Nancy.

When they reached the beach house Harriet changed Luke’s diapers and Amy changed Miriam’s, while Ann managed Greg and Joe and Catherine, keeping them outside and letting them run around while the men got settled. Marcus and Janet carried the salmon into the kitchen, followed by Nancy and Aaron. Danny opened beers for the men—Janet, and Ann, insisted that there could be no hard liquor until after dinner—and went into the “hi-fi” room that he and Marcus had constructed to protect records and equipment from sand and children. The door frame had weather-stripping on all four sides. Marcus liked his jazz. Danny selected the records carefully—Woody Herman, Dizzy Gillespie, Julie Christie, and Stan Getz. Separate speakers carried the music into both the living room and the kitchen.

“Too loud!” said Nancy, putting her hands over her ears.

“That’s Woody Herman,” said Marcus.

He and Janet put the salmon on the counter. Nancy dragged a chair from the table and climbed up on it so that she could watch.

“Get a chair,” she told Aaron.

Aaron pulled a chair away from the table and towards Nancy.

“No, you stand on the other side,” she said.

“It’s too bad that he’s so big,” said Janet. “He’ll never fit in the oven.”

“We’ll have to take off the head and tail,” Marcus said. “More for Phineas.”

Phineas was a barn cat that lived in the garage behind Marcus and Janet’s beach house. Fifty years before, it had been a stable.

“He’s not getting the head,” Janet said. “Not until I’m done with it. We can use it for chowder.”

Nancy watched, enthralled, as Marcus cut the fish’s head off, slicing through the heavy flesh right behind the gills. He cut the tail off too and put them both in the sink. Then he slit the long gut and pulled out the entrails. He put them in the sink as well and washed the blood off his hands.

Marcus drank from his beer.

“Stevenson is dead,” he said.

“It’s not good,” said Harold.

“He’s dead,” Marcus repeated.

“I don’t know,” said Bernie. “They still like him in Illinois. Ike’s heart attack has got to mean something.”

“No,” said Harold. “Ike is just too damn strong. If he has another, that’s something. The Senate and the House. That’s the biggie.”

The other men deferred, just a little, to Harold’s comments.

“That damn oil money,” said Danny, after a pause.

Harold grinned.

“We’ve got oil money too,” he said. “Rayburn and LBJ both. And Bob Kerr.”

“Fucking hillbillies,” said Marcus, in a low voice. “Fucking” was an absolutely forbidden word. “Why are they running the country?”

There was another pause as Marcus waited for the power of “fucking” to dissipate.

“Why can’t intelligence run this country?” he said. “Imagine what we could do with education if we had control of this country for one, for one damn day. Just think of it!”

“You could do a lot,” said Danny.

“You could do everything!” said Marcus. “We waste ninety percent—ninety percent!—of the intelligence of this country! We’ve got Einsteins and Picassos chopping cotton—picking oranges! The country’s run by Okies!”

“Somebody’s got to pick the cotton, and the oranges,” said Harold.

“They’ve mechanized cotton-picking, and they can do the same with oranges,” said Marcus, refusing to respond to Harold’s skepticism, or perhaps not even noticing it.

“Kids can pick oranges,” he said.

“You want to bring back child labor?” Bernie laughed.

“No! But fruit-picking is no job for a grown man or woman! We need to rationalize agriculture in this country, just as we’ve rationalized steel and autos. And the damn private sector won’t do it for us! I do not want to live in a country that makes people sleep in ditches so I can have a glass of orange juice for breakfast!”

Marcus’ face grew flushed. What a goy, thought Bernie. Because Marcus meant it. As a boy he’d been shocked to see the treatment of the Okies, of the Mexicans, of the Japanese. It went right through him. As a teenager, he had read a biography of Abraham Lincoln, and the passage describing Lincoln’s reaction to the sight of slaves at auction went right through him. What Lincoln had known, he had known. It was the same damn thing. And reason could cure it all, could cut out the ignorance and the superstition and the hatred like a surgeon’s knife. If you just had the power!

“We could rationalize this damn country,” he said. “We could!”

His eyes glowed, and he laughed.

“Here’s to the rationalization of the means of production,” said Danny, raising his beer.

All four of them laughed.

“All right, we need a better slogan,” said Marcus. “How about ‘Go, go, go, with BBD&O?’”

The men all laughed again. Out in the kitchen, Janet smiled. It was good to hear them arguing and laughing. Danny and Harold could keep him on the rails, most of the time. And Bernie. Why was he just a dentist? He was so smart. Conscientiously, she separated the salmon flesh from the bones. There was such a fine architecture to a fish’s skeleton, everything in its place. Her sharp eyes inspected the salmon carefully, looking for the last fine, hair-like bones. Now, what did they do? They did something. They had to. They upset Amy so much. Poor Amy. She worried about everything, especially Aaron.

Regretfully, Janet cut the huge filet in half. She took the smaller half and wrapped it in aluminum foil and placed it in the refrigerator. Then she spread layers of foil in her largest roasting pan and lifted the remaining filet into it, covering it with the foil. She put the pan in the refrigerator and washed her hands. She glanced into the living room, smoky and full of talk and loud jazz. She could see Bernie, quiet and happy, bobbing his head to the music. Mark was so funny. He loved music but had no sense of rhythm at all.

“Mommy?”

It was Nancy and Aaron.

“Yes?”

“Can we beat the abalone now? It’s six-thirty.”

“Yes, that’s a good idea.”

Janet went to the refrigerator and took out the three large lumps of abalone meat, wrapped in wax paper.

“Get the aluminum foil and wrap each steak,” she said to Nancy.

Nancy opened the cupboard where Nancy kept the aluminum foil and took out the roll. While she unwrapped and then rewrapped the abalone, Nancy took down a square wooden box—the whacking box, Mark liked to call it. A thick piece of wood fit inside the box. She lined the box with butcher’s paper.

“Can you carry this?” she asked Aaron.

“Sure,” he said.

“Good. Nancy, you take the abalone. Take it right out on the stoop.”

Janet followed with a croquet mallet and a sheet of butcher’s paper. They went out through the back porch and out onto the stoop.

“Now,” said Janet, “wrap the abalone in at least two layers.”

Nancy took the paper and earnestly wrapped a steak. Then she placed it inside the box and fit the wooden lid on top of the abalone. She took the croquet mallet from her mother and stepped back from the stoop.

“Give her plenty of room, Aaron,” said Janet.

Aaron stepped quickly away from Nancy. The little girl spread her stout legs firmly apart and swung the mallet over her head, bringing it down on the abalone with all her might.

“Bam!” she cried.

Janet laughed.

“Now, you two be careful,” she said.

As she went back inside she could hear Nancy shouting as she pounded the abalone. Janet left the door to the porch open so she could hear them, closing the door to the living room to cut down on the noise.

“Bam!” shouted Nancy, as she hit the abalone again. She swung so hard that her feet would fly off the ground when she brought the mallet down. After about ten swings she turned to Aaron.

“Now you do it,” she said.

Aaron took a swing.

“Hit it harder, Aaron,” Nancy demanded. “Slug it! Murder it!”

Aaron swung again.

“Harder!” Nancy demanded. “Hit it harder!”

Aaron raised the mallet over his head, as he had seen Nancy do. He swung as hard as he thought he could.

“Hit it harder! Murder it!”

Aaron swung again.

“That’s it! Murder it! Murder it!”

Aaron pounded the abalone.

“OK, that’s good. Let me look.”

Nancy inspected the abalone carefully.

“Two more whacks,” she said.

She put the abalone back and smashed it twice. Then they began on the second steak.

While Nancy and Aaron worked on the abalone Janet began picking the meat from the market crab. She had cooked the crab earlier in the day, when she first brought it home, and she took it from the refrigerator, all red and beautiful.

“You’re a big boy,” she told the crab.

There was an architecture to a crab’s shell, like the bones of a salmon, curious passages and compartments that must mean something, that contributed strength or buoyancy. Nancy glanced at the crab’s black, fierce, staring eyes for a second before she removed the shell. The backfin meat was thick and gleaming. She plucked it easily and put it on the plate before her. Marcus and Danny had grown up eating crabs and they both missed half of what was there. The rest were from back East and didn’t know anything. Poor Amy! And poor Ann! Such a lady!

Nancy pulled off the legs. Such nice meat! Then she went to work on the claws, cracking them with a nut cracker and using a sharp knife to split the shell just the way she wanted it. When she was done she washed her hands and covered the crab meat with Saran Wrap and put it back in the refrigerator. Then she wrapped the remains of the dismembered crab in newspaper and took it out back.

“How are you doing?” she asked Nancy.

“One more, mommy,” Nancy said.

“Let me see.”

Nancy handed Janet the two steaks. Janet unwrapped the foil. Nancy had a good eye.

“Nice,” she said.

“What are you doing, mommy?” Nancy demanded.

“I’m burying the crab shell so it doesn’t stink. Why don’t you go get the shovel for me?”

“OK.”

Nancy raced to the tool shed, followed by Aaron. She emerged with shovel, taller than she was, grasping it before her with both hands.

“Careful how you run with that,” Janet told her.

“I’m careful,” said Nancy.

Janet took the bundle of crab shell into the garden, followed by the children.

“What will happen to the shell?” asked Aaron.

“It will decompose,” said Janet, thrusting the shovel into the ground and putting her foot on it to drive it down. “It’s good for the soil. Crab shells have a lot of calcium in them.”

“Where does it come from?” asked Aaron.

“From the sea water, and from things the crab eats. You get calcium from milk, for your bones.”

“What does a crab eat?”

“A crab eats just about anything. He’d eat you if he could.”

“He’d come along and pinch you,” said Nancy fiercely, giving Aaron a pinch.

Aaron jumped.

“Don’t pinch Aaron,” said Janet.

“I was just teasing.”

“I know.”

“Would a crab really eat me?”

“No. You’re too big. But he would pinch you. You have to be careful with a crab. They can really pinch you good. When I was a girl I was pinched by a crab and had to get two stitches. See where he pinched me?”

Janet held out her hand and Aaron inspected it gravely.

“Okay,” she said. “You kids finish pounding the abalone. People will be getting hungry soon.”

“I’m hungry already!” exclaimed Nancy, suddenly aware of her deprivation.

“Well, you better finish pounding the abalone.”

Nancy glanced at her mother with a hint of irritation. Mommy was always one step ahead of her.

“Come on, Aaron,” she said. “Race you!”

Nancy flew back towards the house, with Aaron trailing far behind. Janet chuckled. Nancy loved to race people who couldn’t possibly catch her and never knew why they never enjoyed the game.

“Beat you!” crowed Nancy as she arrived at the stoop. “I’ll hit first.”

Nancy took the last abalone steak and wrapped it in the butcher paper. Then she placed it in the whacking box and fit the lid on top of it.

“Stand back,” she announced to Aaron, who had just arrived.

Nancy whacked the abalone. Janet, covering the package of crab shell with dirt, chuckled again. Kids!

She walked back to the house.

“Let Aaron hit for awhile,” she told Nancy. “You put the shovel away. I bet daddy is ready to eat.”

“You hit it,” said Nancy, handing the croquet mallet to Aaron. She took the shovel from her mother and put it over her shoulder, as Janet had done.

“Don’t carry it like that,” Janet said. “You’ll hit somebody.”

Especially Aaron, she thought. Nancy was indestructible, but Aaron wasn’t. And if Nancy gave Aaron one stitch, Amy would never forget it or forgive it.

Janet adjusted the shovel on Nancy’s shoulder so that the blade rested against it.

“Now, hold the end up so you don’t hit the ground with it.”

“I can’t hold it like that!” Nancy shouted.

“Yes, you can. You’re a big girl now. You can do it. Put your hand under it.”

Nancy struggled. It was awkward, but she could do it. All the better, Janet thought. She’ll have to concentrate.
“Off you go,” she said.

She went inside and washed her hands. She opened the door to the oven, lit a match and turned on the gas, setting the temperature at 350. She held the match over the ignition hole and the oven lit with a whoomp. She liked that old black stove, that her father had installed thirty years ago, before she was born. She blew out the match and tossed it in the trash. Then she opened the bread drawer and took out a loaf of sour dough. With a large knife she cut it into slices, and then cut the larger slices into thirds. She put the bread in a paper bag and put the bag in the oven.

The kitchen door opened. Nancy and Aaron entered.


“We murdered it, mommy,” Nancy said, handing her the abalone.

“You murdered it?”

“Yeah.”

Janet checked the abalone. It was nice and tender.

“Okay. Go wash your hands.”

“Can we go play on the rocks now?” asked Nancy.

“No, it’s too late. Besides, you kids can’t go running off by yourselves.”

“But daddy lets me.”

“Well, we have guests.”

“What are you making?”

“Crab. What do you think?”

“Yum! Can I have some?”

“Wash your hands.”

Nancy raced off to the bathroom.

“Come on, Aaron!” she shouted.

Nancy went to the refrigerator and took out a jar of mayonnaise. From one shelf she took a bowl and from another a bottle of vinegar. She mixed the mayonnaise and the vinegar in the bowl, beating them vigorously. She put the vinegar back on the shelf and took the mayonnaise back in the refrigerator, taking out the crab, along with a stick of butter. She picked over the crab once more, finding a few more shreds of membrane.

“Ready!” cried Nancy, returning from the bathroom.

“Let me see,” said Janet.

Nancy held up her hands for inspection.

“You too, Aaron,” Janet said.

Aaron held up his hands. As he did so there was a sudden burst of music from the living room.

“Daddy loves that record,” said Janet.

“Hamp and Getz,” said Nancy. She could read the words on the album, with its funny picture of flattened, twisted men.

“The vibes,” she said.

“What are vibes?” asked Aaron.

“The vibraphone. It’s those bells.”

“The vibraphone is like a xylophone,” said Janet. “What letter does xylophone begin with?”

“X,” said Nancy. “I know that.”

“It means wood sound,” said Aaron, solemnly.

“Did your Uncle Josh tell you that?” asked Janet.

Aaron nodded, still solemn.

“Aaron’s uncle is a college professor, like daddy. He studies Greek.”

“What’s Greek?” demanded Nancy.

“It’s a language. Every country has its own language. In America, we speak English. In Mexico, they speak Spanish.”

“Can I have some crab?” demanded Nancy.



“Brave Indian warrior, my Cherokee,” sang Harriet. “I can’t keep up. It’s way too fast.”

Ann was envious. She wished she could sing the way Harriet did, or play the piano the way she did. Or like Bernie.

“Where are you going, little girl?” she exclaimed at Miriam.

Miriam suddenly burst from the group, giggling fiercely.

“I’ll get her,” said Ann, over her shoulder.

She ran Miriam down and scooped her up in the air, placing the little girl on her shoulders.

Look at that, thought Amy. She does love kids.

“I’ll take her,” she said.

Ann handed over Miriam.
“She’s such a squirmer,” Ann said.

“She is,” exclaimed Amy. “I don’t know where she gets it.”

“Put me down, mommy!” shouted Miriam, her legs pumping furiously in the air.

“All right!” said Amy. “Go play on the swing where I can watch you!”

She placed her daughter on the ground. Miriam started to run away again but Amy caught her.

“I said play on the swing!” she said, sharply.

“I don’t want to!”

Amy spanked her.

“Now go play on the swing!”

Miriam burst into tears and wandered towards the swing set.

“Joe, let Miriam have your swing,” said Harriet.

“I was here first.”

“I now you were. It’s time for you to play on the trapeze. Let’s see you hang by your knees.”

Joe got up from the swing. Miriam, still in tears, advanced reluctantly towards it. She’s such a baby, he thought.

“Show us how you can skin the cat,” Harriet said.

Joe grasped the bar of the trapeze and swung his legs over his head.

“Terrific!” cried Ann.

Joe grinned proudly. He paused for a second and then turned around. Grabbing the bar, he swung his legs up over it and let his upper body hang down. His head swung more than a foot off the ground.

“You’re all upside down,” he said.

Harriet looked at her son’s smiling, upside down face.

“Terrific,” said Ann again.



“Knowland is …,” began Harold.

“Insane,” said Marcus.

“If only,” said Harold. “If only.”

“Where does he get his damn votes?” said Marcus.

“Where did Nixon get his?” said Marcus. “It’s the damn Midwest. They moved here in the Depression. It’s the damn sunshine.”

“Watch your language,” said Janet, entering with the abalone.

“Abalone!” cried Marcus.

“Only for those who don’t say ‘damn,’” she said, putting down the platter.

She had cut the abalone in strips, rolled it in breadcrumbs and fried it. Mark loved market crab, but he adored abalone. Janet purposely made him reach for it, because he was quite capable of eating the entire platter himself if she didn’t prevent him from doing so. She preferred to serve it on separate plates, but he didn’t like it that way. The huge salmon, the shark—there was going to be a lot of drinking tonight, and pot later on. She knew Amy hated that. They could take the kids to Danny and Harriet’s house. But not right away. Not until later. Mark liked to have the women around, and Harriet and Ann liked to have fun. They didn’t want to be housewives, away from the men. Neither did Janet.

“Beautiful, Janet,” said Marcus, his eyes sparkling.

“I found it, daddy,” said Nancy, following closely behind.

“You did?”

“Uh-huh. And I found the crab too.”

“You have sharp eyes.”

“Can I have a sip of your beer?”

“Just a little sip.”

“Just a tiny sip,” said Janet. “And just one.”

Marcus handed her the bottle of Miller’s High Life. Janet watched her carefully as she tilted the bottle back.

“That’s enough,” Janet said.

“Mommy, I hardly had any.”

“That’s enough for a little girl. You shouldn’t have any.”

“I’m not a little girl! I’m a big girl.”

“Have some abalone,” Janet said.

Greedily, Nancy took the largest piece of abalone and gobbled it up.

“Have some abalone, Aaron,” Bernie said.

Aaron took the smallest piece and ate it carefully. They only had abalone at the Kendalls’.

“Have some more,” urged Janet.

Aaron hesitated but Nancy did not.

“Not you, Nancy,” said Janet. “Aaron’s our guest.”

Nancy’s face flashed with irritation.

“She can have my piece,” said Aaron.

“He said I could,” said Nancy triumphantly, claiming the largest remaining piece.

“That’s enough for you,” said Janet. “You kids leave the grownups alone now.”



Dinner lasted two hours. Ann presided over the children’s tables, while the adults sat outside drinking wine and cursing Knowland and McCarran. Harriet came over and they sang “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” and the “Farmer In The Dell.” Nancy and Aaron came to the adults’ table for dessert. Nancy sat on Marcus’ lap and Aaron sat on Bernie’s. Harriet came back from the children’s tables and they sang “Getting to Know You” and “Bye, Bye Blackbird.” Then the men went back inside to listen to more jazz and drink martinis. Nancy loved the noise and excitement. “That’s Dizzy Gillespie,” Marcus said, bouncing her on his knee. Nancy wanted a sip of martini but she knew mommy wouldn’t allow it.

“Come on, Nancy,” Janet said, reaching for her hand. “We’re going over to Danny and Harriet’s house.”

“Why?”

“So you kids can sleep. It’s too noisy here.”

“I’m not tired!”

“Well, you will be soon.”

“No I won’t.”

“Yes, you will. Luke and Miriam and Greg are already asleep.”

“They’re babies.”

“Nancy, come along.”

“Do I have to, mommy? Aaron and I aren’t tired.”

“Nancy. Give your daddy a hug.”

“Give your daddy a big hug, baby,” said Marcus.

Nancy hugged him fiercely, delaying her departure as long as possible. Aaron watched her with curious eyes.

“Now come along,” said Janet, sharply. “I need you to help Catherine.”



The four mothers collected the children. Janet knew that after Marcus had two martinis in him he would be wanting to smoke marijuana. She knew that Amy would be livid, terrified. She had to get them moving. Luke and Miriam and Greg were already asleep, and Catherine and Joe were nodding. Only Nancy and Aaron were awake, and Aaron, silent Aaron, was ready for bed. His big, dark eyes were drooping.

“Get Jennie,” Janet told Nancy. Jennie was Catherine’s favorite doll.

“I want Jennie,” Catherine said.

“I’ll get her,” said Nancy.

Janet picked up Catherine and rested her on her shoulder. At four she was a real burden, but it would take Catherine forever to walk the fifty yards to Danny and Harriet’s.

Assembling all the children with their toys, towels, bathing caps, shoes and socks took more than half an hour. Marcus was asking Ann to dance with him, but she had her hands full with Greg, sleepy but squirming now that he had been picked up.

“The music’s too loud,” Ann told Marcus.

He didn’t understand.

“Just one dance,” he said.

“Marcus, these kids have got to get their rest,” said Janet. “They’ll be cranky all day.”

“Come back later,” he said. “When they’re asleep.”

“We will,” said Janet.

Marcus wanted to hear Ann say it, but she didn’t. The women set out, each with a child in her arms, and Nancy and Aaron on foot. They walked slowly through the sand, through stiff, waist-high beach grass. The tide was high and they could hear the waves pounding rhythmically on the sand. The froth glowed magically in the moonlight.

“It’s so beautiful,” said Ann.

“Look at that cloud!” said Harriet.

Far out at sea they could see an almost perfectly round cloud, silver in the moonlight, resting on the horizon, the glittering sea stretching out to meet it.

“What is it?” asked Amy.

“It’s a storm,” said Janet. “It’ll be here in a couple of days. Remember that big storm two years ago, Nancy, just after your birthday, when the shutter blew off?”

Nancy nodded.

“It looked just like that. We better nail down the shutters this time.”

“It’s so beautiful,” said Ann.

Aaron stared at the silver ball so far away from him. Behind them, there was a sudden burst of noise from the beach house. The men had turned up the volume of the hi-fi.

“Cherokee!” said Nancy.

“Stan!” the men shouted, their voices carrying out into the darkness. “Stan! Stan! Stan!”

© Copyright Alan Vanneman 2011

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Three AM Zurich Time

I needed sweaters principally. I have slacks, thanks to Richard’s sad but timely demise. I could use few belts, perhaps, and a few ties. It never hurts to have more. And shoes. But principally sweaters. Niki likes me to look nice, in a flawless, understated way, but he’s no shopper, and he expects you to take care of the details. A Patek Phillipe every Christmas, but when Niki’s not there I buy my own groceries. This time everything was platinum, even the camera, because it’s our third year together. Don’t tell me the man isn’t romantic! But I can’t bore Niki. He’s too fucking rich. You can’t imagine how rich Niki is. I’ve learned a lot just reading about him.

Which is why I’m sitting in Zurich International, wearing nondescript, second-hand clothes and a cap, pretending I’ve missed my flight and waiting for the phone to ring. I’m wearing the cap because people remember blondes. It’s 2:20 Zurich time and if I don’t get the call by 3 I’m driving back to Paris in my “borrowed” car. That’s François’ idea. He’s crafty, is François. Of course, the car is “borrowed” from his wife’s cousin, but it’s very French to steal from your relatives. Why hurt a stranger when you can injure family? But nothing’s going to go wrong. I wouldn’t do anything that would go wrong just to get my hands on a dozen sweaters. But I do need them. Niki pays for insouciance, and I deliver. Insouciance, blonde hair, and perfect, perfect skin. And I can’t be insouciant for two weeks in St. Moritz without a dozen perfect sweaters right out of the box.

Niki loves skiing. So I love skiing too. You didn’t know I could ski? For a cute Japanese billionaire I’d learn algebra. Besides, I’m quite the thing in my thousand-dollar jumpsuit. They’re so industrial—all zippers and pockets and black space-age fabric. He can’t wait to get me out of them. I am special to Niki. I’m not just a pickup, not just another boy. It’s the skin. Every day is Pearl Harbor Day when I’m around.

Which is why I’m still in Zurich International at 3:10, when good little boys and girls are all home in bed. Bad little boys and girls are apt to run late. At 3:12 the phone does ring. I pick it up and an English voice is reciting numbers, which I copy down. Ten minutes later a money machine is throwing cash at me—$2,000. The money goes in a little bag. I take a parking-lot elevator down to the third level and meet Paolo. Paolo is my contact. Paolo is dirty, ragged and smelly. He’s everything I’ve spent my life getting away from. But Paolo has the sweaters.

Paolo takes me to his van. “We go,” he says. I don’t like this, but I get in. I can see there are no sweaters. I trust Paolo. I trust him because he hasn’t already hit me over the head and taken the money. He wouldn’t take me someplace in the van so he could hit me over the head and take the money. This isn’t the movies. He’d just do it, right here and now.

So we go for a ride, on the Bahnhofstrasse. I’ve been shopping here. But this time we’re going in the back. Paolo has the key. He hands me a pair of surgical gloves, the product with a thousand uses. So nice to have when you’re doing something you shouldn’t. I see why he’s brought me. I’m a mule. We grab nylon luggage, black, very nice, and start filling them with Bally leather jackets. After I carry five bags I get to get my sweaters. Also some lovely Gucci belts and an armload of Hermes ties. I can use them as stocking stuffers. I’ll be popular. I get Hermes scarves for Mischa, Maka and Sheba, Niki’s wife and daughters. I’ll be meeting them in Paris. I teach them French, English and tennis. We go shopping together. I’m charming. They love me. Maka and Sheba call me “ichibano berubetto,” which they say means “way cool.” I can’t help thinking that it really means “cheap Yankee faggott who smells of rotten pork,” but I don’t ask. I’m charming. I give good milage.

We’re back in the van. I want to go the airport, or at least near it, but Paolo isn’t interested. We’re going someplace else. I don’t like this, and start to argue. Paolo shows me this little gun he has, and even chambers a round to impress me. I’m impressed. I’m not riding in a van with a smart crook who carries an unloaded gun to frighten civilians. I’m riding with a dumb crook who might shoot me by accident. I can’t afford to be shot. I’m luxury goods. I can’t afford a scratch, can’t afford a bruise. Niki doesn’t come to me because he wants to be reminded of pain and suffering and the march of time. Niki wants perfect abs and perfect quads, perfect lats and perfect delts, crotch hair like spun gold and perfect, perfect skin.

So now I’m in a room in what must be the only bad motel in all of Switzerland. It’s 5:30 in the morning and the rock music from next door is deafening. And that’s the good news. The bad news is that Paolo is shoving coke up my nose with his finger, and we haven’t even unloaded the van. The boy wants to party and I haven’t got the time. I should be half way to Paris by now, half way to my daily 45-minute workout, half way to dinner with the girls and breakfast the following morning with Niki. I need 24 hours to recover from a sleepless night and I haven’t got them, and from the way Paolo is snorting coke we’ll be here past noon. I can’t afford this, and neither can my skin.

I’d really like to discuss this with Paolo and work something out, but he isn’t listening. He’s pulling my pants off and shoving me on the floor. Everything about Paolo screams pitcher but I’m in for a surprise. He’s got his head in my lap, and he’s slobbering like a Newfoundland retriever. I’m shoved up against the sofa and starting to feel a little desperate. I can’t get the coke out of my nose and I can’t get Paolo off my dick. I’m thinking I may never see Niki again when I notice that Paolo’s little gun has worked its way out of his hip pocket so that it’s resting on the small of his back.

Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. I grab, point and pull. There’s a very sharp little bang, right in the middle of my lap, and Paolo goes over without a sound. I suppose if I had picked a bad angle I’d have come up very short indeed, but I didn’t pick a bad angle. I get Paolo off me and pull up my pants. I’m still wearing the surgical gloves, which is a pearl beyond price. I get in the van and grab my bag. I decide I don’t have the nerve to drive the van back to the airport to get François’ wife’s cousin’s car. I don’t know why, but I don’t. Maybe I’m afraid to drive. Instead, I decide to take the train. I know there’s a tram line nearby because I can hear the wheels groaning on the turns. I wish I could take another bag or two, but I can’t. They don’t match my outfit. I’m traveling student, not Euro-trash. I catch a tram, and an hour later I’m back on the Bahnhofstrasse, heading for the train station. I’m filthy and sweaty and unshaven, and I’m wearing cheap clothes. It’s raining, and I’m walking along the most fashionable street in Zurich at seven in the morning with a heavy bag thrown across my shoulder. All I need is a sign that says “I am smuggling luxury goods into France.”

But nobody at the station gives a damn. The passengers at this hour are a bunch of Italians and Turks, keeping warm with coffee and cheap vodka. The staff are Swiss. As long as you don’t piss in public, they don’t give a damn. A train for Neuchâtel comes almost immediately, which gives me hope that I won’t be remembered, as long as Paolo’s body isn’t discovered for a day or two. That’s my life, all of a sudden. As long as the body isn’t discovered for a day or two, I’m all right.

Once we’re underway I toss the gloves out the window and sit with my legs crossed because I’ve noticed that I’ve got Paolo’s blood on my inseam. The train is rocking slowly and I’m reading schedules. I’m so casual I’ve thrown the bag in the upper compartment. I’m not even looking at it. I suppose I’m taking a chance but if you can’t trust the Swiss who can you trust? I’ll be in Neuchâtel in an hour, where I’ll catch the 9:20 to Dijon. I’ll be in Dijon before eleven. I’ll catch the 11:35 to Paris, which gets in at 3:40. When I get to my apartment I’ll take a shower, change, and take Le Metro to Le Gym for an afternoon workout. I’ll go three stops past my stop and drop my shoes, socks, underwear, shirt, hat and jacket in the trash. I’ll hope to God the Swiss aren’t up to speed on DNA, because if they search Paolo’s mouth they’re going to find some bodily fluids I’d rather not discuss in public. After my workout I’ll have a long, hot shower, a sweet toot—my brand, not Paolo’s—and a long, hot massage. I’ll change at the gym and meet Mischa and the girls for dinner at 7:30. I’ll be in bed before midnight and up at ten for Niki and champagne. I’m sorry for Paolo, but really. A boy needs his rest.

©Copyright 2011 Alan Vanneman

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The Transfiguration of W. H. Auden

“Alice is what, after many years of suffering and countless follies and errors, one would like, in the end, to become.” — W.H. Auden

W. H. Auden stared at himself in the mirror. “Dear, dear, Wystan,” he mur-mured. “Dear, dear.”

Friends were waiting. Let them wait. That’s what friends were for, to suffer. All pleasures faded with age, save one, the pleasure of being the cause of suffering in others.

Auden drank from the glass of gin that sat on the back of the water closet. It was poor gin, because Auden was a poor man. To be rich, or at least comfortable, was not beyond Wystan’s capabilities, but it was beyond his desire. There was a comfort in his wretchedness. He was free, after all, from the necessity of keeping up appearances, of pretending that he wished to be presentable, which he did not. It was pleasant to see people wince at the sight of him, it was worth even wearing glasses, which unfortunately obscured his hideous, rheumy eyes.

Auden chuckled over the word, displaying his stained dentures and unhealthy gums. He was a rheumy ruin. Those wrinkles! Certainly the worst in Christendom, a warning to all who might seek comfort in the flesh. Behold the true Christian, stinking of gin and filthy with tobacco. Auden held up a hand to display its thick, horny fingers and brutally gnawed nails, stained nicotine yellow, subdued to the narcotic that sustained him. Tobacco, even more than alcohol, and far more than sex—though sex retained its potency even now—was his refuge and consolation. One could always smoke, always. The stink of tobacco permeated every aspect of his existence, from his slippers to his soul.

Auden drank decisively from the glass of gin. He would get drunk tonight, drunker even than usual, to celebrate this new awareness of his suffering and his ruin. For Auden did suffer. It was not pleasant to know that the one thing in life that kept him going was the pleasure of inflicting suffering on others. How foul he was to C, his latest boy, a wretchedly bad poet, so pathetic that he would even allow Auden to kiss him. How despicably he treated poor Hannah Arendt, despising her for a preening boche! How vicious he was to Norman Podhoretz, and how pleasant to know that the future of American letters was entrusted to such vulgar hands!

A sharp, hard spasm stabbed Auden in his belly. He stared helplessly into the mirror, unstrung by the pain. He had drunk the gin too quickly. His vanity had betrayed him into believing that he could still drink like a young man. He was an old man now, fit only for a slow, lingering alcoholism. He felt the room contract, as though his senses were forsaking him. He tried to call for help, but he could not speak. The face in the mirror seemed to sag and shudder. He looked awful. Could that creature really be him? All his life he had been ugly, but now! The blotched, spongy flesh seemed ready to fall from his bones. His long, slow, careful decay was collapsing before his very eyes, overthrown by a single, over-bold draught of gin! Auden groaned. He tried to cling to the washbasin, but there was no power in his arms. He was stupid, useless, a living corpse, a summation of sin, his whole life a willed mockery of what it should have been. With his last strength he stared into his hideous face. What shame was his! To die with this knowledge! This was his soul’s last, monstrous gift to itself. Auden’s chin struck the washbasin with a brutal thud. His head banged against the side of the tub.

He felt himself falling in darkness. The concussions, though they registered on his body, caused no pain. His poor, sodden corpse. To be abused in such a way! He was ripe, after all. He felt a fleeting pity for his friends. They came for poetry, and received death instead, the worst of gifts. How he had repaid their kindnesses! What shame!

He stopped falling at last. The darkness was all around. What was waiting for him? What could be? God’s face, or the dry, hungry hands of Beelzebub? He waited patiently for the darkness to recede. He was ready, after all.

“Wake up, Alice. You’re oversleeping.”

Auden stirred. A linen sheet, moist with an English moistness, brushed against his face. He pushed it away and sat up in bed. How easy it was! He almost floated into the air. The brutal weight of the body, the ever-tightening grip of the flesh that had held him for decades, had vanished. Auden sprang from the bed and landed with a soft thump. He was tiny!

Eagerly, he beheld his hands, the soft, dimpled hands of an English girl, with perfect, never-bitten nails. He pulled back the sleeves of cotton shift he was wear-ing, revealing arms round and white enough to tempt the wrath of Hera.

The door opened.

“Alice? Why, you haven’t begun to dress.”

“I’ll be ready in a minute,” he said, in a soft, musical voice. His speech! How tiny he must be to have such a high-pitched voice! Tiny lungs pumping mere thimblefuls of air, tiny, trilling larynx! What marvels to behold! He dashed to the mirror, ignoring the indistinct figure of the servant and avoiding easily the over-sized furniture, so strange, and so strangely familiar.

He stared long at his small, round face, framed with thick, dark-brown hair. He had thought, from the Tenniels, that he would be blonde, but he adjusted imme-diately. Of course, he was Alice Liddell, the true Alice, not someone’s imagina-tion. How serious I am! he thought, looking into his own tiny, dark eyes, eyes that shone under delicate, dark brows. Then he grinned a fierce, little-girl grin. Teeth! He had teeth! What unearned gifts! He poured water from a pitcher and washed proudly in the cold water. Here was Christian duty made palpable and correct! He picked up an oversized brush and began brushing his hair. I must not stint, I must not shirk, he thought, slowly brushing the thick hair and counting the strokes until he reached a hundred. That was, he knew, what girls do.

He put down the brush, went to “her” closet, and found a sort of robe, white with lace and little roses. This is what he would wear? Almost without thinking, he headed out into the hallway to the bathroom. Dark walls towered around him. He entered the bathroom, illuminated by a pair of hissing gas jets. He felt a sud-den wave of pity for little girls like Alice, all alone and barely begun in life, chained to the banality of the body. But his mood changed quickly. Alice was not so helpless after all. The mysteries of the Victorian bathroom, so barbaric at first glance, explained themselves fully after a moment’s thought. The conveniences, though primitive, were well thought out. Everything requisite to the modesty of a young girl was at hand. He seated himself confidently on the Brobdingnagian chair, relieved both his bladder and bowels, and cleaned himself carefully. That was that. He climbed down and put his robe back on. Returning to his room, he dressed quickly. It was remarkable that it was so easy. He gazed hardly at all at his small, naked body. To do otherwise would be unworthy of Alice. Then he re-turned to the mirror and inspected himself carefully. Now he was “herself,” he decided. He would taper off and disappear, and Alice would become herself again.

For what had become of Alice, he thought, descending the massive steps. She must have been here before. Was she now displaced? Would she return? What would she think of him if she did? How did he know all that he knew?

Breakfast was a question of watching and waiting. Adults and children clus-tered around the table, his sisters, one younger and one older, and his parents. They greeted him unremarkably, and he they. He climbed, with a little difficulty, into his enormous chair, which seemed scarcely to raise his head above the level of the table. Father and Mother talked, of course, while servants came in with large plates and covered dishes. He noted with some envy how much taller Ina was than he. Edith was much shorter. Ina condescended terribly to them both, but then, she could hardly be expected not to.

Auden ate his boiled egg, with a piece of toast and a slice of bacon. He had somehow believed—it was the Britisher in him—that in Victorian times everything was as it should be, but it wasn’t. The egg was cold, and a little runny, while the thick, waxy butter that covered the toast was flavored with mildew. The bacon was fatty, and undercooked. The servants bumped the door open loudly, and he could hear them talking in the kitchen. But no one noticed, and no one minded. Auden watched as Dean Liddell drank his coffee. “I should like a cup myself, Papa!” How he longed to say that! That would make them pay attention. But he didn’t, of course. He talked politely with his sisters, and when Mother said “You children may go now” he said “Yes, Mother” with the others, striving for correct enunciation, because he knew it was important and because he knew he didn’t always do it as well as he should.

Lessons were difficult. He strained to read even the simplest words. The large, black letters in his lessons book assumed strange and ambiguous shapes whenever he looked at them, and he would have to smooth them out in his head before he could read them. He wanted to reach out and hold them in place. How Miss Han-son would be stunned by the extent of his true knowledge! Yet it was all he could do to stammer along, and all he could do not to touch his face or twist his body in frustration.

Recitation was better, and singing better still. The words came easily, and he thought that Miss Hanson did not half appreciate how well he caught their rhythm. He sang confidently in his clear, little-girl voice, bright and penetrating. That was Alice’s doing, of course. He could not sing at all.

“Very good, Alice,” Miss Hanson said, “but not quite so loud. And maintain your posture more peaceably.”

“Yes, Miss Hanson,” he said, though it was difficult. His body was so small that it almost seemed there was nothing to control. He breathed deeply, as deeply as he could, and tried to relax.

Lunch came quickly afterwards. He was hungry, of course, but he could eat so little that it scarcely seemed worth bothering. He ate in small, careful bites. This was the way Alice would eat, of course, and therefore the way he would eat, now and for the rest of his life. He had never realized until now how uncivilized he had been, how shapeless and ungovernable, inhuman and unhealthy, so truly Caliban in his pride. “It shan’t happen again,” he thought, wiping his mouth gently with his napkin, and pleased to see that he left no trace upon it.

After lunch he and the other girls went upstairs for a nap. He heard a scratching at the door and there was Dinah herself. Instinctively he bent over to pick up the cat, who submitted gravely to the awkward ordeal. He brought her to his bed and laid her on the covers, stroking the cat’s soft fur. He had never cared for animals before. He stared at Dinah’s solemn face, gently rubbing her nose, and watched as she yawned, baring those milk-white, needle-like teeth. He should have written poems about cats, how they image our humanity.

The nap gave him great time to think. He came back to the real puzzle, the dis-appearance of Alice’s consciousness. Where was she? Certainly she wouldn’t take kindly to her girlhood being usurped by a morose nancy poet on the lam from the Twentieth Century! It was hardly the proper fate of a true English girl! He thought awhile and lay back against the pillow, luxuriating in the room’s perfect stillness, broken only by the faint ticking of the downstairs clock. Here there were no radios, no televisions, and no telephones. The Twentieth Century’s anarchic roar was gone, replaced by the thick, moist English air, which ruled all. Dinah curled against him, and he fell asleep.

When he awakened, things mattered less. He played easily with his sisters, ac-cepting Ina’s dominance without much complaint. It was so much simpler to do as she wished. Telling others what to do had once been his greatest pleasure, but of course he was getting beyond that now. Dinner was quite ordinary. Mother and Father were elsewhere, so they ate alone, with Ina in charge. The food was overcooked, and tepid, and the servants hurried them. Servants, Auden discovered, were not above giving a young lady a brief twist of the arm to move her along her way.

Bedtime was absurdly early. As he lay there in the darkness he felt a sudden resurgence of self. This remarkable adventure, and his rare knowledge, were gifts from God that should not go unused. In his previous life his wide knowledge had been no more than affectation and folly; here that folly would be redeemed. There was a great deal to do, which meant that he must plan. Surely a bit of concentration would bring his reading skills back to normal. He still did not know the precise year, but a glance at a paper would inform him. Then it would be a simple matter to calculate which eminent Victorians would be in the neighborhood of Oxford. Once that was done, the stage would be set for a series of intellectual encounters unlike any the world had known, entirely surreptitious of course—he would do nothing to provoke a scandal—but entirely unique as well. He owed Alice no less. His small heart heat fiercely in his small chest at the thought. Aroused, he crept softly from his bed and went to the window.

A round moon glowed through soft, low-lying mist, joined by a few prominent stars. The darkened shapes of trees and shrubbery huddled on the lawn. In the morning, after he had slept, they would be there again, bright and normal in the light. Brave, sleeping England! He would help waken her! He hoped for a bright sun in the morning. There was a slowness to the damp, a lack of hurry. He crept back to his bed and fell fast asleep.

He was awakened by knocking. It seemed incredible that his small body could demand, and absorb, so much sleep. He leapt from his bed once more, for the sheer pleasure of doing it.

“Alice,” a voice exclaimed. “What are you doing?”

“I’m sorry,” he said, immediately. He had misbehaved. To make up for it he washed and dressed with particular care. Today he studied his naked body in the mirror, which he had not had the nerve to do before. That was what he was: smooth and slim, incredibly small, not an ounce of excess. The simple, discreet curves of his young vagina, though holding the promise of three sons, somehow reassured him. Nothing complicated there; nothing to worry about.

He met Ina on the landing and gave her a slight jostle.

“I’ll tell Mother,” she said.

“No you won’t,” he said, skipping ahead, descending the stairs easily yet careful not to make any excessive noise. Edith lagged far behind, still so young that she had trouble with the steps.

On the first day everything had been so new he had not time to take it in. On the second day he could be more observant. A cautious glance at Father’s paper informed him that it was 1860. He would have guessed 1880. 1860! How little he had known! He felt positively prelapsarian. Industrialism was in its first, disconcerting vigor, and the Victorian sun, though well ascendant, was far from its zenith. Romantically, he had expected an atmosphere of fin de siècle, yet all around him was youth. The tallest man in Europe, standing on tip-toe, could not foresee the great clouds ahead, the war in the trenches, and two sons dead. Would that change? Could it? Would he be an agent?

He was determined to do better at lessons that morning, but found he could not. The neat, large letters in his lesson books continued to defy him. Only the recitation, and the singing, which was Alice’s doing, not his own, truly went well, and his deportment was not what it should have been. It was maddening, in a way, that he could not impose himself more forcefully on something as simple as the life of a young girl, scarcely emerged from infancy.

The harder he pushed the more he exhausted himself, for there was nothing to push against. Determined above all not to embarrass Alice, he could never find the one, fleeting opening he needed to exploit his hidden knowledge. As he climbed the stairs for bed that night, he realized he was no closer to mastering his situation than he had been the day before. But, as he brushed his hair that night and stared at the little girl staring back at him in the mirror, he could say to himself justly “I have not been unworthy of you so far.”

At breakfast the next morning he reminded Edith not to kick her chair, receiv-ing a sharp retort from Mother, for it was Sunday, and such reproofs were felt to be unchristian, at least in a child.

He had known, and he had not known, that it was Sunday. He had dressed appropriately, but until Mother had mentioned it, he had not been aware. Sunday was an adventure, and not a pleasant one. The comforting bosom of the Victorian Church was warm and heavy, and, to his mind at least, openly narcotic. Although, as a daughter of the Dean, he was treated with great respect, this gave him no satisfaction. He sat in the children’s choir, apart from Ina and Edith, on a bench of hard, polished wood, staring at his small, finely made shoes when he was not singing, while the service rolled on and on, a noisy, heavy carriage lumbering slowly down a hill that had no bottom. Then at last it was over, and yet they could not leave, for Father and Mother had to greet personally all the prominent members of the congregation. Worst of all, Auden had to urinate. How thoughtless he had been to let things get so out of control! This was his first real failure. The walk back to the house was truly unpleasant, but fortunately his discomfort went undetected.

As he lay down that evening his sense of failure was renewed. He had missed it all: the entire day had passed him right by, or rather passed right through him. The tedium of the service, which he had thought imprinted on his soul for all eternity, was no more than a blurred memory. As for the rest of the day, he had forgotten it completely. He resolved that, the next morning, he should appreciate things more closely.

But again he did not. He mastered only the externals. The arrangement of his dress, for example, improved, for he was always in sharp competition to draw even with Ina and stay well ahead of Edith, who was terribly sweet but sometimes unattractively precocious. He began to tire of struggling with reading, because recitation and singing came much more easily and made a better impression on others. He began to accustom himself to, to accept without thinking, the slow pace of Victorian life, a life of long preparations and slow journeys that led to brief events, and the long, slow days that lay between. The towering adults, sometimes smelling faintly of coal dust and horse manure, no longer intrigued him with their secret knowledge. Each night he resolved to do better, and each day he did not.

“Mr. Dodgson will be coming as well,” Mother said in passing at breakfast, while announcing a picnic for the following week. At last! The great dream, which seemed to have slipped entirely from his thoughts, suddenly broke the surface of his consciousness once more, complete in every detail. His mind swarmed with learning; the great poets of Europe waited in solemn order to be called forth for display. He could barely eat, so anxious was he for lessons.

“What’s wrong, Alice?” Mother asked, sensing the turmoil.

“Nothing,” he said, with utmost feigning, turning his little girl’s head upwards to confront her.

“Are you sure?” Mother asked.

“Oh, yes.”

“You mustn’t play with your food,” said Mother, announcing her retreat.

“Yes, Mother.”

Auden ate the rest of his breakfast with furious attention to manners, a bland expression on his face, eating neither too fast nor too slow. At lessons he strug-gled patiently with his letters, reading with what he felt sure was a more natural voice. During recitation he could hardly keep from laughing, thinking of what he might say to inspire, if not astonish, the simple Mr. Dodgson.

His concentration and effort scarcely slackened for the entire week. The morn-ing of the picnic he felt himself in a daze of nervousness, which he calmed as best he could by careful attention to routine. Blessed Victorian routine! he thought as he buttoned the myriad small buttons of his dress. Imagine a world with time enough for such buttons! He looked pridefully at his young fingers, the nails as perfect as he had found them. He had been good.

He conscientiously avoided staring at Mr. Dodgson, who was as gently and persistently attentive as he could have imagined. There was a remarkable gentleness about him, that emerged when he was alone with Alice like the sun from behind a cloud, and that would disappear just as quickly when Mother came by. The picnickers sat on a heavy blanket by the roots of a large oak and ate small sandwiches of deviled ham and lamb and drank lemonade. Alice watched as Mr. Dodgson took out a small, silver pocket knife and cut an apple in pieces for her, slicing it into sections and then removing both the peel and the core. After they each had eaten a slice of lemon cake Mr. Dodgson asked her if she would like to go for a row on the lake and she said yes.

The lake was small, its shore marked by a few willows. On one side there was a thick growth of rushes. Alice and Mr. Dodgson walked down to the water, where a pair of small boats were nosed into the shore. Alice got cautiously into one, worrying about her dress and her shoes, but the boat was quite clean and dry. Alice sat and watched as Mr. Dodgson pushed the boat forward and then climbed in as well. The boat wobbled a little, but not enough to frighten her. Once Mr. Dodgson was settled he took one of the oars, pushing against the shore so that the boat glided out into the water. Then he put the oars in the oarlocks and rowed out toward the center of the lake.

Mr. Dodgson talked as he rowed, asking Alice about her lessons and her sing-ing, and about her sisters, and about Dinah. When they were well out into the middle of the lake he drew the oars in through the oarlocks and let them rest on the gunwales, water dripping from the poised blades. The boat glided forward in silence from its own momentum. Alice looked out over the lake. The groups of willows on the shore made a frame through which she could view the others. She could see Mother, seated with Mrs. Matson and Mrs. James. Ina and Edith were gathering flowers with Mrs. James’ daughter Pamela. Beyond them the broad green meadow stretched for half a mile, leading up to a great house of soft gray stone, set on a hill in a cluster of tall green trees. The sun shone down almost directly upon them, so that Alice’s shadow made a small dark pool at her feet.

“It is a beautiful day, isn’t it, Alice?” said Mr. Dodgson, resting on the oars. “Don’t you wish today could last forever?”

Alice watched as an electric-blue darning needle hovered in the air and then descended to land on one of the oars. The faintest of breezes first stirred her hair and then ruffled the insect’s transparent wings.

“Why?” she asked.

©Copyright 2011 Alan Vanneman

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