He pushed himself up with his palms and patted about for his glasses. I put them on for him and he straightened them out. He began to speak, almost apologetically.
“I told you my parents were blue-blood Americans, right?”
“That’s all you said.”
“I’m a descendant of Mawbridge Brockton on my father’s side. He was a Virginia signer of the Constitution. My mother was old line Dutch, of the Van Buskdraats of New Amsterdam, who were entrenched long before the English docked their boats on Wall Street. They made a fortune in the “shipping trade,” which meant slave trade. Down the line they became abolitionists. By the time we got to my parents, the money was gone and their main occupation was drinking and behaving like unappealing Southern gentry.
“My father could either be imperious or charming. Mr. Political Science Professor preened around the U.Va. campus like he was carved from one of its stone pillars, looking for boys to verbally emasculate and coeds to copulate with. My mom, when sober, was a petite, timid woman of leisure, who knew how to hold a teacup, precisely like so.” He held up his right hand as if he were holding a cup with his knobby pinky sticking out.
“When drunk, which took up too many of her waking hours, she turned into a violent shrew. She once slung a shot glass and knocked out my sister’s tooth for purposely using her maiden name when singing ‘Who’s Afraid of Audra Van Buskdraat?’ ”
I rubbed his back, and his posture, which had sunk, straightened up. “I know talking about yourself is not your style, but Nathaniel, that was about them — not about you.”
“What is this, the Salome Rorschach?”
“If you like to think that, then yes. Tell me something that made you you.”
He leaned back and gazed at the clouds breathing by, and sat back up. “When I was six years old, Adele, who worked as a cook for my parents and was very cute and very black, and my uncle George Turnbull Brockton — that’s how he referred to himself and made us do the same — they had a terrible row. It was a summer morning and I was zipping around in my red fire truck in the backyard. I heard this scream and looked up and saw Adele and Uncle George entangled on the second-floor veranda. The next moment she came flailing to the ground. She broke her arm and a leg but survived. I never saw her again. I guess ‘row’ is Orwellian family-speak. Families perfected it before governments—”
“No politics. What happened next?”
“We were told that Adele was ‘slow’ and Uncle George had been attempting to persuade her not to jump. That was life among ‘colored’ and white in Virginia in the ’40s.
“When I was fourteen, I had an argument with my father about the South’s peculiar racism. I brought up Uncle George Turnbull Brockton and Adele, and said I thought they were having an affair. He shook his head condescendingly and told me I had a creative imagination and my notions of race and American history were silly and clichéd. I answered that he lived a life of privilege based on maintaining the racist status quo. Boom. He went to slap me across the face. My reflexes were quicker than his and I caught his hand in midair, and I just held it there. I’d never defied him before. I let go and he stormed out of the room. That fall it was, ‘Pack your bags, Nathaniel. You’re on the next train to Exeter.’
“The day I left, I went to say goodbye. Robert, one of the ‘workers’ in our family for years, was driving me to the station. I looked in on my mother in her ‘studio,’ already soused, some Charlie Parker coming off the record player while she gadded about in her free-form modern dance. I didn’t even bother to interrupt her.
“I knocked on the door of my father’s study and peeked in. He tilted his head up — I’ll never forget the book he was reading, The Lonely Crowd—and said, ‘Remember, you are a Brockton. Do not disgrace us. We’ll see you at Thanksgiving.’ ”
Nathaniel’s eyes were so bleak, I cupped his cheeks between my hands and placed my forehead against his and held it there for a moment. “It’s because you are you and the way you were born — honest and good — that you do what you do.” I kissed him. He tensed. An egret flew over and cawed — it was Kyle. I clutched Nathaniel’s arm. “You won’t hurt me. You’re no homicider. I told Alchemy about you last night.” The way I talked to and about Alchemy made Nathaniel a tad nervous. “Jesus, Nathaniel, people talk to God all the time, do you think they’re all crazy?”
He laughed. “Yeah, I do.”
“My baby is real and he can hear my voice.” I kissed him again. I envisioned we’d end up together, at least for a while, when the time was right. I never would’ve guessed it’d take another five years! I wanted him then. The sex didn’t make the highlight reel. I didn’t care. Although he wasn’t the father, I treasured the idea that Nathaniel’s seed swam within me and the unborn Alchemy.
He left the next day for a college speaking gig. He promised to be in touch very soon. When I didn’t hear from him, I told myself the untruth that I didn’t care. Then I heard the news on the radio: The Feds busted him for dealing drugs and he jumped bail. I knew they’d set him up. I followed his exploits the best I could from the mainstream and underground papers. I read a piece he wrote in the Voice and heard a couple of taped interviews on WBAI. After almost a year I got a call from a guy who didn’t give his name. “Nathaniel says he is sorry, but he can’t contact you and he hopes you understand.” He hung up before I could get more information or say, “Send him my love.”
14 MEMOIRS OF A USELESS GOOD-FOR-NUTHIN’
Don’t Know Much About History, 1992
After we left Collier Layne, I postulated we’d beeline it to the California surf ’n’ sunbathing society. I mispostulated. I could get around the subway blindfolded, and my compass said Northern Boulevard runs east-west across Long Island, and if I head north I end up drowning in the Sound and that the East River is west of Flushin’, but Iowa, Idaho, all them is the same. So I got no clue we’d sort of detoured in the wrong direction as Part II of the Alchemy Experimental Family Tour. When we stop for taking leaks and gassing up, I see a sign that says D.C. 30 MILES, and I think we’re halfway to L.A.
“We gonna go have a cocktail with the prez? Got some advice for him from my brother and my dad. My brother got back from Iraq last year, and my dad, who was in Nam in ’69, they love Bush and they think nukin’ Hussein and taking the damn oil fields is the right fucking move.” I think he’s surprised I know who’s the president and even more surprised that I’m clued in to Hussein and oil.
“We’re skirting D.C. and heading to the Shenandoah Mountains. We need to swap cars. I need some clothes and cash or we’ll be hitching to L.A.”
He ignored my family’s input on solving the Iraq situation.
“I still say we hit up the prez for some dough. His family’s loaded.”
“I don’t take gifts from an Ivy League warmonger who once was Chief Spook.”
“That’s exactly the cheese balls whose palms I wanna tickle. Makes ’em feel superior and gets me on their good side. Besides, he’s still the prez. Even you,” I razz him, “must respect that.” He just nods like he’s keeping score of my answers. He had this way with everyone, almost never saying out loud that he is judging you so you couldn’t call him on it, but I damn well sensed it.
He announces we’re seeing Nathaniel Brockton, like he’s the pope or maybe Ozzie Osbourne. I inquire, “Who the fuck is that?”