Chapter 32

Moths fly to the light and batter themselves against the glass that keeps them away. Flowers stay open to the sun, oblivious as to whether or not it is burning them. Ron wondered if he was like those things as he drove down the parkway. His plan was to pick up Robin and ask her if she wanted to go to Rahway for the traditional Thanksgiving gathering. He had called Zoe, but her family had not yet had dinner and she was sure that it would be at least midday on Friday before she would be able to get out of there. She was excited that he had called her at home. “I’ve been thinking about it and I know now more than ever before that I love you, Ron. I think about you all the time and I have been drawing you from memory. I know that I want to have babies with you.”

Ron blushed on the other end of the line. He did not tell her that he loved her just then. He had never told her that he loved her. He had never told her that he wanted to have babies with her. Robin had always made it clear that she didn’t want children and this had appealed to Ron. He thought that world should learn how to take care of the people that were already here before creating a bunch of new ones. He didn’t need the trophy babies to assure himself. He’d told Robin that he would call her the next day and drive up to get her.

He wanted to sit in front of the fire in the living room at Rahway and talk. He wanted to feel Robin sitting next to him and to talk to her afterwards about what people had said and get her perspective. He loved Rahway. He loved it, as much as he loved Robin, she would have said that he loved it more. But both Robin and Rahway had rejected him and there he was trying to crawl back like a dog that had been kicked away from the fire. He wanted to know what he could do so.  That he wasn’t rejected. He wanted to be who they wanted him to be so that they would love him as much as he loved them.

Sure they just would have said that he was supposed to be himself. Ron laughed out loud in the empty car at this thought. People were always telling him to be himself, except that when he was himself, they always sent him away. It occurred to Ron just then that he was probably more himself with his students than he was with anyone else. They didn’t send him away. They embraced him. They wanted more and more of him. Sometimes they wanted too much of him, like when they asked him if he ever tried LSD or Marijuana.  Ron had given them the evasive answer, “I always wanted to be in control of myself.” And part of that was true. It was what he disliked about tripping. But he didn’t feel that he lost control when he smoked pot. He felt that it helped to focus him. To bring him to that zoned in place where nothing distracted him from what was right in front of him.

“Why on earth would you possibly want to go there?” said Robin. She was looking at him with an incredulous smirk on her face. “Did they invite us to go there?”

“It’s a standing invitation,” said Ron. “Thanksgiving night at Rahway. A lot of people will just show up. Warren and Laureen expect it.”

“They aren’t expecting you and me, Ron. I guarantee you that.”

Ron felt himself slump.

“Maybe you should just go, if that’s what you really want to do.”

Ron felt that she was testing him. That phrase, “if that’s what you really want to do” was one that he’d heard before. If he said yes, she would feel that he was choosing them over her again. If he said no, she would think that he was still weak and that she could manipulate him anyway that she wanted to pull or push him. It had been a bad idea and now he was stuck with it. “I thought that maybe you’d enjoy seeing some of those people,” said Ron. “We haven’t really seen anyone since you came home. But maybe you’d rather go to a movie.”

They went to see Annie Hall. Robin had thought that a good comedy would be just the right thing. Ron had not particularly liked Woody Allen and thought that it was going to be a silly, slapstick kind of story, but he agreed. He sat there fighting back tears through almost the entire film. It was a story about Robin and him. Is this why she had wanted to go to see it? The theater was dark and crowded and she held his hand as they watched. Once she had looked at him and saw the tears rolling down his face and quickly looked away. It was sad in a silly kind of way, she thought. When the story came to the part where Woody rewrote the ending of their relationship, Robin wondered if Ron would do that with her. But he never talked about his writing anymore. It was like he had left that part of him. He was no longer the young and aspiring poet that would get up in front of crowds and read his material. Had she done that to him? Had she taken that away from him? More than likely it was all the pot that he had smoked that had done it. She wasn’t going to be blamed for that too.

Ron made sure that his face was dry by the time the houselights came up and they walked out of the movie house. “If you’d like to go to Rahway we can,” she said.

“No,” said Ron. “You were right. We didn’t have an invitation. It was an old idea.”

He was very quiet. They got into the car and waited as the de-icer cleared one of the early nighttime frosts from the windshield. He lit a cigarette. She had stopped smoking. People were lining up to see the 10 o’clock show. Ron looked at the couples and wondered if they knew that they were doomed. They didn’t kiss goodnight. They hugged.

“My father is going to take me to the airport,” she said.

“I’m sorry that I couldn’t help you,” said Ron, “but I had this commitment.”

“You don’t need to explain,” said Robin. She walked off thinking that she hated it when he got morose.

Chapter 31

Dinner was sumptuous. It began with an antipasto. There were paper thin slices of prosciutto wrapped around small pieces of fresh melon that George had ordered from Florida. There were black and green olives and a bowl of cold shrimp. There was wet mozzarella and Swiss cheese and artichoke hearts and cold red beets. But before they began to eat, Marjorie asked Reverend Cooley to say grace.

The Coolys and the Pascals had recently returned from Africa. Reverend Cooly was a tall man who was totally bald on the top of his head but sported slicked back sides with his remaining hair. He wore silver framed glasses and Ron noticed that he had very large hands when everyone bowed their heads to pray. His wife had curly hair that was kept short. Ron thought that it looked like a bird’s nest on top of her head. Reverend Cooly wore a brown and orange plaid sports jacket that looked festive in a garish sort of way. His wife, who was only introduced as Mrs. Cooly had a patient smile glued to her face and Ron noticed that it never left. He thought that it was the kind of smile that could be described as long suffering.

Dominick Pascal was a big man, which is a polite way of saying that he was obese. Ron counted three chins. His wife Sela was very thin. Dominick was wearing a blue suit with a little American flag lapel pin that Ron noticed immediately. He wished that he had an American flag shirt and that he had worn it to piss them off.

It occurred to Ron somewhere early in the meal that these people did not particularly like Marjorie and George and that they were there as an act of Christian brotherhood. It was something about the way that they pronounced “antipasto” and keep remarking on how unusual it was to start a Thanksgiving meal with such an exotic dish.

Marjorie was oblivious to it all. She wanted to know about what it was like in Africa.  “I can tell you this Marjorie, you would never get such a fine meal as this anywhere in Africa.”

Ron looked up. “Really? You were over the entire continent?”

“Quite a bit of it,” said Dominick. “Quite a bit of it over the last six years.”

“What was it like in Egypt?” said Ron.

“We were never really up North” said Dominick. “Egypt and Africa are really two different places.”

“They are?” said Ron.

Rev. Cooley said, “Mr. Pascal is speaking culturally rather than geographically, Ron.”

Ron nodded. “So except for Egypt then is it really all the same?’

“Oh no! There are widespread differences,” said Cooley.

Mrs. Cooley added, “Some of the coastal states like South Africa are truly beautiful.”

Ron shot her a glance. “Too bad about Steve Bilko then wasn’t it?”

George laughed heartily, now on his 3^rd Manhattan and said, “Now there was a really funny man. Was his name really Bilko?”

“Do you mean Phil Silvers?” said Dominick.

“Steve Bilko just had his brains beaten out for wanting the freedom to organize the true people of South Africa,” said Ron. “He was in prison and they beat him on his head until he was dead.”

“That poor man,” said Mrs. Cooley.

George reddened and drank. Marjorie got up and cleared the dishes for the next course. Ron got up to help her. In the kitchen she whispered to Ron, “Please be nice. Please do this for me.”

Ron nodded and said that he would try.

The next course featured the roasted turkey and the stuffing that Marjorie had made for the first time outside of the bird. There was a bowl of creamed pearl onions and a long dish of candied yams. There was a large bowl of yellow turnip. Then Marjorie walked out with two more bowls. One held string beans and the other was filed with broccoli. This year they were also having fresh cranberry sauce, something that Ron had never tasted before. The table filled up under the growing eyes of those seated around it. Ron could have sworn that he actually saw Dominick lick his lips. He was proud of the table that his mother and George set. George was actually an excellent carver of meat and so the turkey’s carcass was neatly stripped. Ron thought for a moment about the way that he had hacked up a bird in the past and wound up actually pulled the legs and wings off with his hands and exposed ripped out pieces that made it look as if some predator had attacked the game with its jaws and claws.

Reverend Cooley said, “Well this is a magnificent looking table.”

The guests all looked from one to the other smiling and nodding their heads. There was a respectful moment of quiet and then the murmurs of “Oh yes, I would love some of that” that came as the plates were passed around the table. As they began to settle down to their plates and eat, Cooley said, “Your mother tells me that you are a teacher, Ron.”

Ron finished chewing and swallowed and said, “This is my first year at it. I hope to be a good teacher.”

“Lord willing, I’m sure that you will be,” said Cooley. “What did you do previously?”

“I spent some time in a jail in Paterson and before that in a center for the mentally ill in Cranford,” said Ron. He was instantly sorry that he had mentioned the jail. He saw the look of pain wash across Marjorie’s face. He knew that it made her think about her long searched for, and never found, father.

“Some of our greatest minds have spent time in both of those places, Ronald. No reason to be ashamed,” said Mrs. Cooley. It caused Ron to grin.

“I don’t think that the young man meant that he was incarcerated in either of those places, Mother,” said Reverend Cooley. “I think that he was telling us that he worked there.”

Mrs. Cooley bit her lip and said, “Oh I am sorry,” and momentarily put down her knife and fork. Ron saw Marjorie glare at the woman. He wondered what his Aunt Dotty would have said if she had been here. “Please do forgive me, Ronald.”

“No offense taken, Mrs…” Ron paused and feigned a look of confusion.  “What is your first name?”

The Cooleys exchanged a look of quick tension. And the Reverend Colley said pointedly, “Mrs. Cooley’s Christian name is Gladys.”

Ron ignored the signal. “No offense taken, Gladys.”

The Cooleys exchanged the look again. George asked if anyone wanted more wine or cider. Dominick was hunched over his plate and seemed to be shoveling the food into his mouth with the precision of a back hoe. Sela Pascal picked at her food demurely, occasionally deigning to lift a half filled fork to her mouth and tentatively placing it to her lips before opening the cavity just the slightest bit to place it inside. She then chewed thoroughly and touched her napkin to her violated lips just after she swallowed.

“What do you teach, Ronald?”

“English,” said Ron.

“So you are a man of letters,” said Gladys Cooley.

“Rather than numbers, yes,” said Ron.

“What do you do for a living, Mr. Bombasco?” said Reverend Cooley.

George had a large helping of turkey in his mouth and held up his hand while he chewed, asking her to wait. Hurriedly he chewed and swallowed and then blurted, “I’m a printer.”

“What is it that your company prints, George?” said Dominick, raising his head up for the first time, his face grown red and his cheeks swollen from exertion.

“Local papers and the Foodtown circular,” said George, happy to be on firm footing. He did a man’s job and he did it well. It was a time honored profession. He didn’t spend his time in bars with games or in classrooms with little girls.

“What do you do, Dominick?” said Ron.

“Sela and I have dedicated ourselves to spreading the word of God.”

Ron nodded. “Does it pay well?”

An electric look of tension passed around the table at the impudence of the question. Reverend Cooley spoke. “The rewards are manifest, Ronald.”

Ron had just done some reading about the ways that Missionaries had helped to rape Hawaii. He knew that his mother had wanted to be a missionary when she was young.  He also knew that for her it had been a deep and sincere desire to make the world like the world she envisioned that Jesus would have wanted.

“How do you do that in 1977?” said Ron. He shrugged. “I mean, I imagine that everyone has heard about it by now.”

“Many are they that listen and do not hear,” pronounced Cooley.

People were now reaching out for additional food, all except for Sela whose plate was still more than half full. Ron took additional dressing and ladled some of the surprisingly good fresh cranberry sauce onto his plate. Marjorie took additional candied yams. Dominick went for a refill of everything. Even the Cooleys took more turkey and potatoes.

“What I mean is,” said Ron, “what exactly do you do?”

“Well, with all of the European countries giving up and all this talk of individual States and Countries, there is a movement back to old heathen ways in Africa and we try to combat that.”

“And how do you do that?” said Ron. He found himself now genuinely interested.

“For one, we work on old legends and songs, the things that these people believe because they really don’t know any better. We sometimes take the melodies of old songs and rewrite the stories, providing an enlightened look at the world.”

“You change their history?” said Ron.

“They really don’t know too much about history, Ronald.”

“How do you know that?”

Cooley seemed to ignore the question. “They have folk songs and tales that they tell each other. And we inject the Divine presence into them.”

Ron put down his fork. “So basically you steal their history the same way that slave owners stole the language of African slaves in America.”

“We don’t think of it as stealing, more that we are giving them gifts.”

“Suppose they don’t want your gifts?”

“We also provide food and clothing and medicine.”

“Well, that’s good,” said Ron. “Do they get the medicine if they don’t sing the songs the way that you want them to?”

“Marjorie, I must say that this is the most delicious meal that we have had since returning home,” said Gladys Cooley.

After the pies and the coffee and the fruit and the nuts, the men went to watch a football game and the women congregated in the kitchen.

Ron saw that the Miami Dolphins were drubbing the St Louis Cardinals. He had always rooted for the Cardinals because he liked their quarterback, but Miami was just too good and the game was not competitive.

Football didn’t live in him the way that it used to. He knew that he would never play again, not even in a game of two-handed touch. The men were sprawled with their bellies sticking up like large amphibious creatures sunning themselves in front of the light of the TV instead of being on some rocks watching the sea roll in.

He looked to the kitchen. There was a constant clatter of pots, pans and dishes as the women honored a time old custom of not leaving each other with a mess to clean. Ron would have preferred being in there, but he knew that his presence would ruin Marjorie’s being the center of attention. They would all feel compelled to make a fuss over him being there,

or in the cases of these other two women perhaps express their discomfort with him not acting like one of the men.

Chapter 30

 

Of all the holidays on the calendar Thanksgiving was his favorite. It

was the only one that had not been tainted over the years by his changing beliefs.  He had lost his feel for Christmas and Easter when he had started to question his Christianity. The Viet Nam war had cost him the 4^th of July. He had never really loved Halloween or New Years. As far as Ron was concerned the year began in September anyway. Summer was the conclusion of the year. But Thanksgiving had always remained.

He liked the idea of being thankful. He loved the feast. He loved the football games. He loved the way that Marjorie had always respected the spirit of the holiday by inviting people to their house who had nowhere else to go. Aunt Dotty had taught him that Thanksgiving was a holiday that began in Massachusetts and that it always reminded her that she was actually a New England woman by birth.

That Thursday morning he showered and dressed happily. He wanted to call his father and wish him a good holiday, but that was another casualty of Viet Nam. When he started spouting his radical politics and Ron’s half brother and sister had begun to listen to his thoughts, Ron’s father had told him that he wasn’t welcome there anymore. That was the last real conversation that he and his Dad had. That had been over five years now.
“Happy Thanksgiving, Ronald,” said his mother. They kissed quickly. She had started setting the holiday table which started in the dining room and stretched into their living room. George was galloping around the house setting up a bar. He looked excited but glum. “I don’t know who you think is going to drink all that alcohol,” said Marjorie.

George stopped what he was doing. “It’s a holiday. People are allowed to have a drink on the holiday, Marge.”

“I don’t see why they need to,” said Marjorie. She curled her lips and crinkled her nose and shook her head slightly as if she was throwing off a bad odor.

“Who all is coming?” said Ron.

“Reverend Cooly and his wife and Reverend Pascal and his friend,” said Marjorie happily. “And of course your Aunt Mina. I asked the tenants upstairs, but they have someplace to go.”

“Yeah,” said George. “She wanted to take out an ad in the paper but the town already has a soup kitchen.”

“Maybe you should start drinking now,” said Marjorie. “At least then you’ll be able to talk when the company gets here.”

George shook his head. “What would I say to these people?”

“Of course, if it’s not about cards, or booze, or crime, or the price of vegetables, what would you have to contribute? Why do you think I depend on Ronald so much? At least he knows how to carry on a conversation.”

Ron tried to change the mood. “If they are anything like the nuns in the convent George, they’ll go through quite a few bottles of everything.”

George laughed and returned to his preparations.

Marjorie straightened and put her hand on her hip and gave Ron a look of betrayal. “They aren’t Catholics who live all shut away from everything,” she said. She paused and looked over at George and then back at Ron. “Can we please just have a nice dinner? Is that really too much to ask from the both of you?”

Ron moved into the kitchen. The aromas were outstanding.  The roasting turkey filled the house and the oven made everything so warm that George had opened the windows. Ron loved having the windows open in a warm room on a cold day. It was extravagant but the feel of the breeze reminded him of warm weather. Chipper came over and wagged his tail and Ron crouched down to pet him. “I’m gonna take the dog for a walk,” he said.

He leashed Chipper and they went out the back door and through the aluminum gate and down the street. Chipper never got taken for a walk unless Ron was there and the excitement of new smells and freedom gave him a prance to his step. They walked across Bloomfield Avenue and down to the glen, where Ron took the leash off and let Chipper roam. It was their secret that he did this. George would have been horrified that he was going to get into trouble for having a dog off of a leash and Marjorie would have been worried that he was going to run away and get hit by a car again.

Ron talked to the dog as they walked. “It doesn’t seem the same now that Aunt Dottie is gone, does it Chip?”

The dog stopped at the mention of her name. He raised his head and looked around for a few sad seconds and not seeing her, returned to his olfactory cornucopia. Ron smiled and then felt the dried leaves crunch under his feet like the spirits of the dead.

He wondered if there was an afterlife. The resounding no in his brain was painful. It was so much easier to think of his aunt and his grandmother someplace happy and beyond pain. He wondered if that was where the idea of a heaven came from. There had to be some reward for being good. Otherwise, why didn’t people just spend their lives doing what they wanted to do? Wasn’t that the whole purpose of hell, to keep people in line? It wasn’t enough to say that a person would live on in the hearts of others. What kind of real comfort was that if there was nothing about it which a person could actually enjoy? They reached the end of the Glen and Ron leashed Chipper and started back across the street.

Ron held the leash so that it just slacked slightly across the dog’s back, just enough for him to keep his pace and not feel the jerk of confinement. He loved Chipper. It was true that George had announced that it was his dog and then failed to housebreak him and slapped him in the mouth far too many times, so that Chipper had developed that self defensive urge to bite. But the one time that he had bitten Ron, he had with some strange instinct,  crouched down on the floor and held his hand up to Chipper’s mouth and said pleadingly, “no.” That formed a strong pact. Chipper never bit him again and Ron never ever slapped the dog. They turned up the asphalt driveway and through the metal gate and the leash was off, Chipper romped for a few seconds and then came wagging up the backstairs and into the house.

Glimpsing down through the lower windows into the basement and flashed on how he had stayed down there with Chipper when George had taken to chaining the dog there because he could not stop him from urinating in the house. Ron would ask each night if Chipper was allowed out of the basement and George would say, “Not tonight.”  Ron would nod and take his plate from the table and walk downstairs to share his dinner with the dag and sit by him. This move, of course, had driven Marjorie totally insane and she would peck at George about her son eating in the basement until George would inevitably throw up his hands and say, “Do whatever you want.” They moved passed the pantry and up into the kitchen where Ron saw his father, sitting with Marjorie and George, having a holiday drink.

“Hello, Ronald,” said his father with slick gentleness that did not withhold a hint of judgment.

Ron looked up and saw at once that his mother looked younger and sat with a fresh glass of cider in front of her and seems to be glowing. George was sitting back. Ron was not sure what George was seeing.”Hello Dad.”

Ron felt like he was instantly transported back to the age of fourteen or even younger, back to that time in his life when he worshipped his father and everything that his father did. His dad was now sitting in front of a cut crystal glass into which George had poured two fingers of Scotch over two ice cubes. He had also made himself one.

 

“Come and sit at the table, Ronald,” said Marjorie. Ron felt himself moving and sitting. Chipper followed and sat by his side with a look of moral support. “Now, it’s time for the two of you to stop your foolishness and just make up,” said Marjorie.

Now the heat in the room was making Ron sweat, but he resented the way that his mother had put him on the spot and with of all people, his father. “What would you like us to make up, Mom?”

“There’s no reason to be shitty,” said Marjorie.

Ron met his father’s blue eyes with a steady look from his own hazel eyes. He felt the fluttering inside that he always felt when he looked at his father. “It’s good to see you Dad. I hope everything is going well.”

“I hear that you have a job teaching,” said Harry. And then unable to help himself, added “So I guess that you finally finished school.”

Ron eyes flashed a look of defiance. “I may go back. You can never learn enough, you know.”

Harry turned to Marjorie, “Twenty-five years old and still in school.”

And then his eyes panned back to Ron. “You can’t learn everything from books, Ronald.”

“Thanks Dad.”

“Now the two of you just stop it right now.” Marjorie could see her plan swirling around the toilet bowl and just about ready to be flushed.

“How are Carol and Tim?” said Ron, referencing the two children that his father had from his second marriage, the two children that Ron had been told to stay away from.

“They are great. Timmy is playing basketball at Bloomfield High School and Carol graduated from East Orange Catholic last year and is learning to be a lab technician.”

Ron smiled. “That’s great Dad. Tell them that I said, hello.” Ron stopped himself before he added something about unless you think it’s too dangerous for them to hear my name mentioned.

“Why don’t you tell then yourself?” said Harry.

“And just how am I supposed to do that, Dad?”

“You’re welcome at the house anytime.”

“Since when?” said Ron.

“I never said that you couldn’t come there, Ron. I said that I didn’t want you filling their heads with your crazy ideas.” Ron knew that was a lie but it didn’t matter to him.

“Yeah, I know. Thinking that the war was a tragedy and that Nixon was a monster were really crazy ideas. Almost as crazy as thinking that black people were people, huh Dad?”

“Do the two of you always have to be like this?” said Marjorie with desperation in her voice. She looked at Ron and pleaded with her eyes, tried to reach that place where he knew how important this was to her. Bur Ron was unreachable now. He and his father were locked into each other with a gaze that was unbreakable.

“If you had seen the things that I have seen, Ronald, you would understand why I feel the way that I do.”

Ron knew that his father was in and out of some of the seediest bars in Newark New Jersey, a city whose very name struck fear into the minds of some suburban people. He had to admit, he had not seen the things that his father had seen. “Poverty and discrimination make people do very strange things Dad. It’s not like everything became great when the Civil War was over, you know?”

“I’m not one of your students, Ron.” said his father with a steely timbre in his voice.

“No Dad, my students are mostly Black and Hispanic.”

“Bunch of animals,” said George, trying to show solidarity with Harry.

Anger flashed across Ron’s face.  “You know what I have found George? The Hispanic families are very much like the Italian ones. They love their culture. They take care of their kids. They resent anyone who is not the same as they are and they like loud meals. And to top it all off they are Catholic.”

George reddened. To his way of thinking he had just been called a spic. Harry could see this wasn’t going the way that Marjorie had said that it would. “Well I guess that I better get going. Ronald, you are welcome to come over whenever you want. Carol and Tim would love to see you.”

“Really?” said Ron. “Where do they think I’ve been?’

Harry didn’t answer but stood and put on his coat. Marjorie automatically stood up to. So did George. Ron sat there. He really didn’t want his father to go, but what could he do about it now?

Marjorie walked Harry to the door and when she came back her face was set into a hard mask. She walked into the kitchen where Ron was petting Chipper and waiting for what he knew was coming. “Why are you such a bastard?”

Ron didn’t answer.

“Your father is a proud man. Do you think that it was easy for him to come here and apologize to you?”

“Did I miss the apology?”

“Him coming here was an apology. He knows that he’s made some mistakes. But he is a good man and he is your father!”

“Makes you wonder about nature and nurture doesn’t it?”

“I’m not as smart as you are, you little bastard, so I guess I’m going to have to ask you to explain that to me.”

“What it means is, Mom, can you imagine what it would have been like if he had stuck around to raise me?”

Marjorie was taken aback. That was not what she had expected him to say. Harry would have been very hard on Ron and she knew how free he was with his hands. She regretted a lot of things about her failed marriage with Harry, but seeing Ron and then trying to imagine how he would have turned out with even more of Harry’s influence on him was not one of them, even if he did need a good clout in the head once in a while. She knew that Harry would have been jealous of his brain.

Chapter 29

Ron woke up and saw that there were still two and half joints left in the ashtray. Maybe he was slipping. The dream left him troubled as it always did. He made coffee and kept seeing glimpses of the floor in his head.

His phone was ringing.

“Ronald, this is your mother.”

For a moment Ron was stunned. Had they found the body? Is that why she was calling? “Hi mom,” he said almost shakily.

“Why aren’t you working?”

“They gave us the half day off.”

“I just had an interesting phone call. It was Robin. It seems that she thinks that you are living here.”

A new fear gripped Ron.  “What did you tell her?”

“I didn’t tell her anything. Just that you weren’t here.”

“That’s good,” sighed Ron.

“I really don’t want to see you mixed up with that girl again, Ronald. She isn’t any good for you.”

“I know Mom.”

“And I really don’t want to be involved in your lies.”

“I know Mom.”

“Your father was a liar and I thought that I had taught you better than that.”

“You did Mom.”

“Well it doesn’t really seem that I did. Anyway, she asked that you call her.”

“OK.”

“Are you going to call her?”

“Yes,” he said quietly.

“Why? she said. “So that she can break your heart again?”

“No Mom,” he said with a slight tone of exasperation creeping into his voice.

“I always thought that you were so smart. Why do you have to be so stupid about this?”

Ron didn’t say anything.

She went on. “But I suppose you are going to do whatever you want to do. You always have. You won’t care how it hurts me or anyone else to see you the way that she makes you.” Ron felt his head hang and he began pacing as he listened to her.  “Well, I don’t suppose that there is any chance that you would have the time to take your mother to the cemetery today.”

“I really had plans, Mom.”

“What, to mope around your apartment and sulk about Robin?”

Then a new thought seemed to strike her. “Where’s the other girl? The little mousey one.”

“She isn’t mousey.”

“When she squints through those glasses she is mousey.”

“She’s with her parents for the holiday. If you really need me to take you to the graves…” his voice trailed off.

“Oh no, I’m not about to beg you to go and see your grandmother and my mother and Uncle Mike and the Aunt that you professed to have so much love for.” She paused and then said. “How many times have you visited your Aunt’s grave?”

“I don’t know Mom.”

“When was the last time that you were there?”

“I don’t remember”

“Such a fine memory and he can’t remember the last time he went to the cemetery. I suppose it will be the same way with me, won’t it? You’ll never visit my grave”

Ron had had enough and then he said out of nowhere, “Do you think that there’s a body buried in the basement?”

“What!” he voice was incredulous. “What kind of a thing is that to say to a person?  Do I think there’s a body buried in the basement? George will you listen to this?” she called out. “Ronald wants to know if we have a body buried in the basement.”

“Go and do whatever things that you have to do Ronald. What time will you be here tomorrow?”

“Whatever time you want me there, Mom.”

“You’re not bringing Robin are you?”

“No, Mom I’m not.”

When he hung up the phone, he called Robin immediately. She answered on the second ring.

“It’s Ron, my mom said that you called.”

“Yes, she was surely happy to hear my voice.”

Ron didn’t answer for a long time. “You know how our parents are. None of them, with the exception of my father, seems to like the one of us for the other.”

“That’s not really true Ron. My mom likes you very much.”

“Anyway,” said Ron. “What’s up?”

“Are you still mad about last night?”

“I wasn’t mad,” he said. “I was hurt. Why do you always think that I’m mad when you’ve hurt me?”

“I don’t want to argue, Ron. I called to tell you that I’m going back on Saturday and I was wondering if you could take me to the air

port?”

“I don’t think I can. I have something that I promised to do with a friend.”

She was silent. She was not at all used to Ron saying no to her. Then she said, “We’re even going to lose our friendship because I won’t fuck you aren’t we?”

For the first time in Ron could not remember how long, he felt himself seething with anger at Robin. His had gripped the phone tightly.  “Yeah Robin, fucking you is what I’m all about.”

“I didn’t say that. But the truth is Ron, that if I were fucking you, you wouldn’t be mad at all.”

Ron’s voice with almost a hiss when he spoke.  “I asked you to marry me last night and we haven’t made love in years now. And you still think that it’s all about me sleeping with you? It doesn’t matter what I say or do for you. You still think it’s all about that.”

Robin seemed to recoil on the phone. Ron could sense the look on her face. He could see the way that her jaw line squared. He could see the way that her forehead furrowed. He could sense the way she tilted her head so that he blond hair hung down over her face. “If it’s going to be like this, we shouldn’t see each other anymore.”

Ron caught himself before he uttered the word “fine.” He kept it locked inside of his brain. “Do you want me to drive down and pick you up?”

“Not if we are going to fight.”

“We won’t fight,” he said.

“Then I would love to see you,” she answered.

Ron drove down the parkway wondering why it was that he found himself so helpless around her. Was it because that she was the first woman that he really had loved? Was it because she was the first woman that really had hurt him? In fact she had devastated him. He had needed to have people put him back together and in some ways he felt that he would never be the same. He thought about a Fitzgerald essay. Was he like “a cracked plate” that had been glued back together and which people would never really trust because it could always fall apart? Was he so damaged that he would never again feel really whole? Was it like his knees? He remembered lying in the hospital bed after that first surgery and realizing that he would never be the same again. Was this like that? Were affairs of the heart very much like what happened to damaged limbs? They could be put back together but they would never have that “full throated ease” or feel that unrestrained joy again.

He reached her mother’s apartment and stood at the door. He needed answers to these questions but he was pretty sure that the answers were not going to come from a conversation with Robin. They didn’t have those tender conversations any more. It was then that the realization hit him that he could not rely on her.

When she opened the door she put her arms around his neck and kissed him. It was a lover’s kiss. She molded her body to him and he swore that he could feel her hips moving against him. She said, “I didn’t think that you’d come.”

Ron felt like a dog who had been given a treat. He wondered if he should wag his tail in the hopes of another. Robin felt his immediate reaction when she pressed against him. Feeling his hardness, she was reassured.

Chapter 28

 

On Tuesday, Robin told Ron that she was going back to Minneapolis after the holiday. She told him on the phone. She didn’t want to see his face when he heard the words, but she saw it in her mind’s eye anyway.  She asked him if there was anything special that he wanted to do with her before she left.

“When are you coming back?”

“I don’t know.”

“What about over Christmas?”

“That’s too soon,” she said. “I won’t be able to afford it.”

Ron blurted, “I don’t want you to go.”

“That’s my home now Ron and besides you have a lot going on here. You have your students and you need to find a place to live. And I think I will be better off out there.”

“What’s so great about Minneapolis?”

“You thought it was beautiful when you were here.  Maybe you’ll come back and visit me again.”

Ron felt himself freeze on the other end of the phone. Go back there! She really expected him to go back there? The last time it almost killed him to be there.

She heard the silence on the other end of the line. Then she said in a small voice, “What’s so great about living here?”

“It’s our home.”

“It’s your home.” Now she wondered if she should have told him at all until the last minute. He would spend the next two days sulking about it and be no fun at all. Why couldn’t he just learn to accept things as they were? Why did he always have to try to change everything until it was the way that he wanted it?

They drove into New York City.  Ron told her that the school had given them an extra half day off. The rumor was that they wanted to save the money on heat but no one cared. At the end of the day on Tuesday, Irene Emanuel came on the loudspeaker and announced that Father Jones had decided that everyone could use the extra time as a reward for their hard work and so the girls could help their mothers prepare for the holiday feast. They were also reminded that there would be extra masses said on Thursday and that there was no better way of showing thanks and appreciation than to come to God’s house to start the holiday.

The city was alive with traffic and holiday lights and an air of the frenzied festivities. Ron was pleased to see that the backstreet where he was always able to find a place to park was still relatively undiscovered. He side his Chevy neatly into a place and then they walked around the block to her old school.

Before she’d left for Minneapolis, Robin was on scholarship to an acting school. He had picked her up from school the four nights a week that classes were held and they had walked these streets together often and knew all of the cafes.
Ron thought that the West Village was nothing like the East Village. Things seemed cleaner and more expensive. They slid into a booth at a café on West 4^th Street. They stared out the window and Robin remembered how much she loved The City and how she would someday come back and live here.  Then he began quoting lines from the Leonard Melfi play Birdbath.

It was a play that they had done on stage together. And the lines made her laugh and he was laughing too and then he took her hands and said, “I really don’t want you to go.”

He noticed that she didn’t pull her hands back when she said, “I know.”

He decided to plunge on. “Suppose we got married?”

Now she did pull her hands back.  “Ron, we aren’t even lovers anymore and besides, I’m seeing someone.”

Ron face crumpled like a squashed carton.  He lit a cigarette. His hands were shaking. The place seemed very hot and noisy. He looked at his reflection in the glass. He stared at the table. He tried to look anywhere but at her. He desperately wanted not to cry. Finally, he asked, “Do you love him?”

She laughed lightheartedly. “I don’t think so.”

Then he got very quiet. All he could see was images of Robin and her faceless, nameless lover. She stood on her toes to kiss him. Her hands hurried his hips as they made love. Her special smiles were all reserved for him. It was for him that she brought home presents. It was to him that she told her secret thoughts. She told him how she counted in colors. She sang Broadway tunes for him. He could see her now. Her voice gentle and high as she sang, “I would die, I would die, I would strangle myself with my tie. If ever you said good-bye, then I’d die.” He remembered when she has sung that for him and now he did wear a tie every day.

Robin quietly kicked herself for the way that she had handled it. Why hadn’t she seen it coming? Why had she told him that she was going back? Why had she ever mentioned Richard?

“Ron, don’t you see how much baggage we have?” she asked quietly.

“I see but I don’t understand why we can’t make it different.”

When he dropped her off, she leaned over and kissed him. It was a long and tender kiss. He felt her arms go around his neck and felt her breasts push against his chest and he tried hard not to over-react and so he didn’t react at all.

“Will you call me tomorrow?” she asked.

“Sure,” said Ron and then she was gone. He drove down towards Rahway and when he passed the house he saw that all the lights were on and that there were cars in the driveway. He slowed down but he didn’t stop. He drove back up the parkway to his apartment and when he walked in the door the phone was ringing. It was Zoe.

Ron loved many things about Zoe but right now chief among them was that she never asked where he had been. He was there now and that was all that she seemed to care about.

“I can’t wait till Friday,” said Zoe. “I miss sleeping with you and drawing you and doing the things that we do.”

“It’s good that you’re getting to see your sisters and your parents. How are things going up there?”

“Heidi really wants to meet you. She says that you sound neato.”

“Neato,” repeated Ron. “Well, tell Heidi that’s the very first time that I have been told that I am neato. And what has your older sister had to say?”

“She just says to have fun with you and to be careful to not let you break my heart. But I don’t care. You can break my heart if you need to break it.”

All at once Ron felt tender and guilty. She was so incredibly vulnerable. She deserved at least some modicum of loyalty.

“On Saturday, can we go and pick out a stone?”

“Sure,” said Ron. “Should we be stoned to pick out a stone?”

He waited for Zoe to laugh but she answered seriously. “I think it would help if we were. We would caress the surfaces with more sensitivity and feel if there were interior cracks or faults.”

Ron smiled. Maybe this was the girl for him. Then she solidified the feeling saying softly, “I’ve been so horny. I’m wet all the time. I can’t believe how much I have missed sleeping with you.”

After the call, Ron looked through his albums. They had salvaged much more from his burnt out shell of an apartment than he thought would have been possible, and Zoe had brought down her stereo. He put an old Dylan album on the turntable and grinned to himself as he placed the needle in just the right spot. Dylan intoned, “If you’re travelling in the North Country fair, where the winds hit heavy on the borderline. Remember me to the one who lives there. She once was a true love of mine.”

Immediately tears sprang to his eyes. He needed to smoke a joint. He always needed more than one and so he rolled his customary 3 joints and lay back and listened to the songs roll over him. Then he shifted to Jackson Browne’s first album and dropped the needle at the start of Jamaica. He lay his head back and thought, there they were in a nutshell. Robin the girl from the north county, and Zoe the beautiful Captain’s daughter from Jamaica.

The taste of the pot was fine. He felt it swirl into him with a welcoming haze and the soft glow of the interior light that illuminated his brain when he was high. But then “My Opening Farewell” found its way into his mind and he saw Robin standing in front of that open window.  He wondered if it would be easier if he was the one who was going and not the one who had been left behind.

When he slept that night he had one of his two recurring dreams. He could almost feel himself groan in his sleep when the dream started. It was by far the one that scared him the most. In the other dream, he was waiting in a car and then he was shot and in a hospital bed while people gathered around him. He was not in pain in the dream but he could not move and then he felt himself getting better and stronger and would find himself in the car again waiting to be shot. That was the easier dream, but this one scared him so completely.

He was in the basement of his mother’s house. And he was digging up the concrete floor. He was digging up a body that he had buried there. The body was wrapped in plastic and he could not see who it was but the fear that rushed through him caused his heart to race and made him break out into a sweat in his sleep. He could not remember killing someone. But there was this body and he was sure that he had put it there and now he was trying to get it out before someone discovered it. He pounded on the concrete and felt it crack and then break into huge chunks. He swung the sledge hammer down hard and watched sparks and dust and small shards of stone break off. And then he could see the plastic and the sight woke him up.

He sat up shaking in the darkness. He could never really kill anyone, could he? The answer did not come from inside of him. Was the silence an indictment?  Had he really done it and repressed it? Would he be found out as the murderer that he was and thrown into some dank hole and be forgotten? Had he really ended a life? No, he tried to scream to himself. He could not have done that, he would never do that.

Why would he bury the body there? Right in front of the washing machine and the dryer. How had he repaved the floor? George would surely have noticed. He would have been caught a long time ago if it had really happened. But he kept dreaming it and the dreams came at the most unexpected of times. A body wrapped in heavy plastic beneath a concrete floor in his mother’s basement and he was responsible for it being there. He was the only one who knew that it was there. Ron tried to tell himself that he read too much Edgar Allen Poe.