Days of Awe, page 15
“Your wife?” she asks.
“No. The baby’s mother,” he says. And then he laughs. “She recently asked me to leave, said I was just occupying space.”
The nurse smiles at him. “I’m sure she didn’t mean it.”
“I think she did,” he says.
The nurse pours herself a coffee and goes back to work. He sits waiting.
He flips through the photos of his childhood again—the last good time.
“I am going on a journey,” he tells his grandmother when she is out of the bath. “I don’t know for how long.”
“So is this good-bye?” she asks.
“Would you like me to stay, to wait?”
“No,” she says.
“Where are you going?”
“In search of something,” he says.
“Where will you look?”
“In America,” he says. “I want to go to the desert to put my feet in the sand.”
There is a pause.
“What?” he asks. “You look sad.”
“I just wish you could have found it here,” she says.
He nods. “I have always been somewhere else.”
“I have something for you,” the grandmother says, sending him to her closet, to her bag, and there is a sealed envelope with his name on it. “It’s been here all along,” she says. “It’s for you from your grandfather and me.”
“What is it?” he asks.
“It’s your ticket out,” she says.
He opens the envelope, and it is a ticket he made years ago—a pretend ticket to take a spaceship around the world. And money, a lot of real money. He can’t help but smile.
“I thought you might need it,” she says, laughing.
“This is too much,” he says of the money.
“Take it,” she says. “I have no use for money.”
“I’ll take the ticket and save the rest for the baby.”
“You do what you choose.”
“I love you,” he says, bending to kiss her, and then he has to turn away—it’s too much.
“You always have,” she says. “Let me know what happens.”
* * *
—
On the plane to Los Angeles, the movie starts to play, then stops, then repeats itself from the beginning. Each time it starts again, it gets a little further, and after the fourth time the passengers beg the crew not to try again. “It’s enough,” they say. “We can’t keep watching the same thing over and over”—but of course he can. For him each time it is different. Each time he looks at it, he sees something entirely other. He looks at the ticket he made years ago—the flight is like a giant ride, the turbulence like the up and down of a roller coaster, the whole thing is an adventure.
Upon arrival he puts on his sunglasses—Ray-Bans; he never wears them at home, but here the glare is too much, the shadows bold, directed like slashes of light and dark, dividing the world into patterns, grids playing off the concrete, the parking lots, the chrome of the cars. He gets into his rental car and heads downtown. He is fascinated by what he sees, the cracks in the roadway, curbs that dip down at the corner for handicapped people, confusing intersections with flashing Walk and Don’t Walk signs. He drives for hours and hours, up, down, around, stopping only to look, to think. He drives just to drive, for the pleasure of driving. He drives despite its being decadent and wasteful. He drives because it is something you don’t normally do—just drive with nowhere to go, driving for the satisfaction of watching the road unfold. The wide boulevards—Santa Monica, Wilshire—are appealing for the straightforward rise and fall of it all. He drives to the tar pits, to the place they call the Grove, and then toward Hollywood—sex shops, tourist depots, and from there up the hills toward Mulholland Drive and what he thinks of as the top of Los Angeles, looking out over it all, the industry of Los Angeles. On the way back down, he stops for a hot dog, and the guy behind the counter laughs when he calls it a sausage. Still hungry, he gets a burger from a place that you have to have a kind of code word for—a friend told him it’s not enough to just get a cheeseburger, that he should order it “animal style,” meaning with sauce and pickles and onions. It’s like he waited to arrive in order to eat. He drives, he eats, he consumes everything and feels optimistic for the first time in a long time. He checks in to his hotel, takes the car out again, and drives to a bar downtown. Sunglasses on—the sky is still blue, the day bright, the street entirely empty. He is a foreigner who feels less foreign when he’s away from home.
* * *
—
“Just coming in from the cold?” an old guy in the bar asks him, noticing his winter clothes. He wears ginger-colored corduroy pants, his shirt is dark green—basically he looks like a tree lost in a forest. The old man is lingering over a scotch. His face is heavily weather-beaten, he’s thin, his hands are gnarled. “I know what you’re thinkin’,” the old guy says, aware that he’s being looked at.
He shrugs.
“You’re wondering if I’ve got a cigarette.”
He shakes his head no. “I don’t smoke.”
“I used to carry them on me all the time—I used to get ’em for free, cartons and cartons of ’em—‘Just give ’em away,’ they’d tell me. ‘Give ’em to anyone you run into and tell them your story.’”
He listens a bit more carefully.
“I still have the story,” the old guy says. There’s a pause. “You wanna buy me a drink?”
“Sure,” he says.
* * *
—
“I grew up in Texas,” he says. “My daddy worked horses; I did, too. Only went through sixth grade, and then I just couldn’t be bothered.” The old guy is playing with the short straw in his drink, knotting it with his gnarled fingers. “I learned a trick or two, rode in the rodeo for a bit—roping horses, was a rodeo clown. You know what that is?”
“The fool in the pickle barrel who lets the bull come toward him,” he says.
“That was me,” he says. “Till I got kicked too hard, and then I thought there had to be a better way. I came out west and got into the industry, mostly building sets, doing a little of this or that. Tough when you don’t have much of an education. Anyway, it ended up that sometimes they needed a cowboy, someone good with animals, someone who could stand in and do a trick or two.” The old guy looks at him as if to ask, Are you following what I’m telling you?
He nods.
“I’m it,” he says, tossing back his drink. “I’m the last cowboy.”
“Is that it? Is that the whole story?”
“No,” the old man says. “But you gotta put another quarter in the jukebox.”
He signals the bartender to pour another round of drinks.
“Back in 1955 this fellow Leo Burnett—that name ring a bell?”
“No,” he says.
“Leo Burnett came up with this great idea for an advertising campaign—to sell cigarettes. He thought of a cowboy, rugged, masculine, and so it was born—the Marlboro Man.”
“Are you saying that you were the Marlboro Man?”
“Not exactly,” he says. “I was the stand-in for the Marlboro Man. I was the one that came early and left late and stood around for hours under the hot lights—I was the one who ran. I got paid a few bucks and a fuck of a lot of free cigarettes, that’s what I’m trying to tell you.” He shifts his weight on his chair. “I’m in pain,” he says. “My hips are crap. I fell off horses so many times it’s amazing I can walk a single step. But despite it all, I’m the last man standing. Hey, so what about you, Mr. Man, what planet are you from?”
“I just got into town,” he says. “Just passing through.”
“Do you need a place to stay? I’ve got a sweet corner spot in a shelter downtown. It’s pretty crowded, but I could put in a good word for you.”
“No,” he says, “I’m okay. I’m heading south tomorrow.”
“It’s comin’ on Christmas, you know.”
He nods.
“You got plans?”
“Not really, just kind of playing it as I go.”
“Well, I’m not one to preach, but if you want to go to church, we’ve got some good Christmas Eve services, and there’s a bunch of places to get a hot meal. Some of us, we don’t have much, but what we’ve got we share.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, thank you,” he says, getting up to go. He digs in his pocket and finds a twenty and tries to give it to the guy.
“I can’t accept,” the man says. “It was good enough of you to buy me a drink—I need nothing more.” And then he stops to think. “I’m lying,” he says, taking the money. “I’ve got nothing—twenty bucks and I can live another day.”
“Merry Christmas,” he says, still feeling the old man’s fingers on his hand as he exits the bar. The old man follows him out. They step onto the sidewalk—it’s still bright and warm and so different from anyplace else.
A car cruises by and stops at the light, blaring loud music. The old guy leans toward the driver’s window and shouts, “Make it louder!”
He laughs at himself for still being in love with the idea of cowboys—wondering what it is he thinks is so magical about men learning to be tough, to hold on to their feelings—to say less rather than more. He thinks of cowboys as loners, rebels, lovers with wounded hearts, rule breakers, fierce, brave, like John Wayne, Roy Rogers, and Clint Eastwood.
“God love ya,” the old man says, slapping him on the back before he ducks into the bar.
He goes to his hotel, orders a pizza, and looks through his photo album, turning to the pages he thinks of as the Last Good Time: the family trip to Disneyland the Christmas before it all went wrong. His plan is to drive to Disney in the morning—in search of what he has left behind.
* * *
—
Exhausted, he tries to sleep but has lost track of time and finds himself dressed, ready to go at 4:00 a.m. He forces himself to lie back down, remembering that his mother used to say, “Rest—even if you can’t sleep—just rest.”
* * *
—
Checking out of the hotel at 5:30 a.m., he arrives at Disney before the gates open. He drives in meditative circles around Anaheim for ninety minutes before parking in the enormous structure and finding his way to the train that will deliver him to the Magic Kingdom. At the train depot, he feels himself begin to recede. What had seemed so clear, so obvious, a return to the place where things were good, becomes opaque. He feels small, in need of direction, lost in a sea of families. He lets the first train leave the station and then the second, and finally after a while the train conductor, noticing that he’s been standing on the platform, asks, “Are you waiting for someone? Do you need assistance?”
“I don’t know where to begin,” he says.
The conductor ushers him into the first car on the train. “It may sound corny, but . . .” The conductor begins to sing, “‘Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.’”
“Thank you,” he says, thinking the tune sounds familiar.
He passes through the ticket booth and enters the Magic Kingdom. Surrounded by people in a frenzy, rushing to get to this world or that, he stands still for a moment, feeling both excitement and trepidation, knowing that there’s a good chance his first reaction is not going to be one of relief—nothing is the way it used to be.
Last night he made a map for himself—a kind of agenda based on the photos in the album. His plan is to visit each of the attractions he went to with his parents. He hopes to conjure his memories of that day and of his childhood in general.
He breathes deeply; it means too much to him. He looks at the faces of the children and their parents around him taking in the whole thing for the first time, the look of surprise and enchantment, joyous and over the top. His parents came to America because he wanted to, he begged for it. Walking through the park, he tries to think of himself as shorter, smaller, his experience less broad, his understanding only half formed. He tries reimagining himself as naive. It occurs to him that the different lands within the park are like sets for a film, that each tableau is an unfolding scene and the guests are in fact the actors. It is all a fairy tale, all make-believe, and he wants to go in deep, to be the boy he once was, the boy who thought it was real. And at the same time, the brute force of reality, the intrusion of truth, is inescapable, and with it comes sadness. People with FastPasses hurry by, conspiring to find their way around the long lines for each ride. He doesn’t remember there being long lines, doesn’t remember there being such a competitive edge to everything.
* * *
—
At the Mad Tea Party, he gets into his own spinning teacup. He tries to spin fast. He went on this one with both parents; he remembers that he sat in the middle, his face stretched in a smile of exaltation. As he turns the center wheel, round and round, faster and faster, the cup begins to spin and his memories unspool; in his mind’s eye, he sees his mother and father, youthful, athletic, playful, taking turns with the camera, taking turns posing with him, and then sometimes asking a stranger to take a photo of the three of them together. Looking back, he’s always wondered if he missed the clues, if he should have seen it coming or if the whole thing happened offscreen.
* * *
—
His father never told him he’d left. One day while he was at school, his father came and packed up his belongings. He also took the train he’d given his son for his birthday—the boy was not sure why.
He didn’t realize what his father had taken until after he told his mother that his train was missing. “Why?” he wanted to know.
“Ask your father,” she said.
“Where is he?” the boy asked.
“I have no idea,” she said.
“When is he coming home?”
“He’s not,” she said.
“But he was here,” the boy said.
“While we were out,” she said bitterly.
“When is Daddy coming home?” he asked again, and again sure he was just misunderstanding something.
His mother got angry.
“Did he take anything of yours?” he asked.
“He took everything,” she said. The boy followed his mother into his parents’ bedroom, and she opened the father’s side of the closet—empty except for the Christmas sweater his mother had recently bought him.
“Even his toothbrush?”
“No,” she said. “I suspect he has another.”
“Why?” the boy asked.
“Because there was nothing left,” she said, and shrugged, resigned.
“Me?”
“That’s not a reason to stay together.” She took a moment to collect the shoes he’d left behind and put them in a bag. She set the bag out by the trash along with the Christmas sweater. The man who lived downstairs, who was in charge of taking the trash to the curb, took the bag. More than once the boy saw the man wearing his father’s Christmas sweater and felt his heart accidentally jump, thinking his father had returned.
* * *
—
Dumbo, the flying elephant, is crowded. He waits patiently, and when the family in line ahead of him asks if he minds sharing an elephant with the grandmother, he says he’d be happy to and smiles. Her thick-soled shoes and coiffed white hair remind him of his grandmother. They board their elephant, buckle in, and take off. At first he drives, dipping the elephant up and down with the joystick, pretending they’re catching up on the grandkids in the elephant just ahead. And then he asks if she’d like to drive, and she’s thrilled. When it’s over, she beams. “Thank you,” she says, “you’re a very nice boy.” He wishes it were true. In the canal boats of Storybook Land, he remembers that his father would take him out on Sundays. He wouldn’t come into the house—they’d have to meet somewhere. Often they’d just go to a park, and before bringing him home his father would buy him an ice cream. On rainy days they’d sit in a museum or sometimes, still in the park, under the shelter of a tree.
* * *
—
“Where do you live?” he asked his father.
“I’m staying with a friend,” his father said.
There was great formality, a distance between them. Who are his friends? he wondered but couldn’t bring himself to ask.
He found out his father was staying with a woman who was a math teacher at his school—one of his friends told him. At first he thought it was a joke and pretended it wasn’t true, but when he saw the math teacher in the halls, he noticed she went out of her way to avoid him. She would see him and pretend she didn’t.
“Does she have any children?” he asked his father after some time had passed.
“No,” he said. “She never wanted children.”
“Why does she work with children if she doesn’t like them?” he asked his father awhile later.
“No doubt she would have done better in a university, but there are very few jobs and she’s a bit older.”
He remembered being with his parents at Disneyland, laughing, his father being silly, the world seeming magical, unreal. “It’s unbelievable, there’s no dirt here,” his father said.
* * *
—
And then he remembered his parents at home after the trip to California, his father becoming more serious, losing his sense of humor, and as he did, his mother became more playful, almost as if mocking him, and it made his father angry. “Grow up!” he remembers his father shouting. He glances at the photographs. What he remembers is true, there was no dirt, everything was spotless, perfect, everything was in its right place. There was a parade down Main Street. There were wonderful old cars, tooting horns, and a float carried Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, assorted fairies and others. His father lifted him high, sat him down on his shoulders—a change of perspective. And then there’s a photo of his mother and father, each holding him by an arm and swinging him through the air—he recalls the sensation of flying like an airplane. He sees it now and realizes how sentimentalized it is—the railroad station, city hall, the opera house. It’s small-town America comes to the big city, a utopian vision of a world that might have been but never really was, the budding landscape of power. He is in it, and the conflict remains; is that consciousness or bitterness? he wonders. Is it his adult self mourning a lost childhood? Is it his own anger at himself for being stuck in this place—needing to make sense of it, needing to make it right?
