– -
But really we had never lived in that asylum. We both escaped through books. My favorite was the story of King Arthur and his Round Table. I read all the versions, all the popularizations, and the original Malory version. And I guess it’s obvious that I thought of King Arthur as my brother, Artie. They had the same names, and in my childish mind I found them very similar in the sweetness of theft characters. But I never identified with any of the brave knights like Lancelot. For some reason they struck me as dumb. And even as a child I had no interest in the Holy Grail. I didn’t want to be Galahad.
But I fell in love with Merlin, with his cunning magic, his turning himself into a falcon or any animal. His disappearing and reappearing. His long absences. Most of all, I loved when he told King Arthur that he could no longer be the king’s right hand. And the reason. That Merlin would fall in love with a girl and teach her his magic. And that she would betray Merlin and use his own magic spells against him. And so he would be imprisoned in a cave for a thousand years before the spell wore off. And then he would come back into the world again. Boy, that was some lover, that was some magician. He’d outlive them all. And so as a child I tried to be a Merlin to my brother, Artie. And when we left the asylum, we changed our last name to Merlyn. And we never talked about being orphans again. Between ourselves or to anyone.
– -
The plane was dipping down. Vegas had been my Camelot, an irony that the great Merlin could have easily explained. Now I was returning to reality. I had some explaining to do to my brother and to my wife. I got my packages of presents together as the plane taxied to its bay.
Chapter 9
It all turned out to be easy. Artie didn’t ask me questions about why I had run off from Valerie and the kids. He had a new car, a big station wagon, and he told me his wife was pregnant again. That would be the fourth kid. I congratulated him on becoming a father. I made a mental note to send his wife flowers in a few days. And then I canceled the note. You can’t send flowers to a guy’s wife when you owe that guy thousands of dollars. And when you might have to borrow more money off him in the future. It wouldn’t bother Artie, but his wife might think it funny.
On the way to the Bronx housing project I lived in I asked Artie the important question: “How does Vallie feel about me?”
“She understands,” Artie said. “She’s not mad. She’ll be glad to see you. Look, you’re not that hard to understand. And you wrote every day. And you called her a couple of times. You just needed a break.” He made it sound normal. But I could see that my running off for a month had frightened him about me. He was really worried.
And then we were driving through the housing project that always depressed me. It was a huge area of buildings built in tall hexagons, erected by the government for poor people. I had a five-room apartment for fifty bucks a month, including utilities. And the first few years it had been OK. It was built by government money and there had been screening processes. The original settlers had been the hardworking law-abiding poor. But by their virtues they had moved up in the economic scale and moved out to private homes. Now we were getting the hard-core poor who could never make an honest living or didn’t want to. Drug addicts, alcoholics, fatherless families on welfare, the father having taken off. Most of these new arrivals were blacks, so Vallie felt she couldn’t complain because people would think she was a racist. But I knew we had to get out of there soon, that we had to move into a white area. I didn’t want to get stuck in another asylum. I didn’t give a shit whether anybody thought it was racial. All I knew is I was getting outnumbered by people who didn’t like the color of my skin and who had very little to lose no matter what they did. Common sense told me that was a dangerous situation. And that it would get worse. I didn’t like white people much, so why should I love blacks? And of course, Vallie’s father and mother would put a down payment on a house for us. But I wouldn’t take money from them. I would take money only from my brother, Artie. Lucky Artie.
The car had stopped. “Come up and rest and have some coffee,” I said.
“I have to get home,” Artie said. “Besides, I don’t want to see the scene. Go take your lumps like a man.”
I reached into the back seat and swung my suitcase out of the car. “OK,” I said. “Thanks a lot for picking me up. I'll come over to see you in a couple of days.”
“OK,” Artie said. “You sure you got some dough?”
“I told you I came back a winner,” I said.
“Merlyn the Magician,” he said. And we both laughed. I walked away from him down the path that led to my apartment house door. I was waiting for his motor to hum up as he took off, but I guess he watched me until I entered the building. I didn’t look back. I had a key, but I knocked. I don’t know why. It was as if I had no right to use that key. When Vallie opened the door, she waited until I entered and put my suitcase in the kitchen before she embraced me. She was very quiet, very pale, very subdued. We kissed each other very casually as if it were no big deal having been separated for the first time in ten years.
“The kids wanted to wait up,” Vallie said. “But it was too Tate. They can see you in the morning before they go to school.”
“OK,” I said. I wanted to go into their bedrooms to see them but I was afraid I would wake them and they’d stay up and wear Vallie out. She looked very tired now.
I lugged the suitcase into our bedroom and she followed me. She started unpacking and I sat on the bed. Watching her. She was very efficient. She sorted out the boxes she knew were presents and put them on the dresser. The dirty clothes she sorted into piles for laundry and dry cleaning. Then took the dirty clothes into the bathroom to throw them into the hamper. She didn’t come out, so I followed her in there. She was leaning against the wall, crying.
“You deserted me,” she said. And I laughed. Because it wasn’t true and because it wasn’t the right thing for her to say. She could have been witty or touching or clever, but she had simply told me what she felt, without art. As she used to write her stories at the New School. And because she was so honest, I laughed. And I guess I laughed because now I knew I could handle her and the whole situation. I could be witty and funny and tender and make her feel OK. I could show her that it didn’t mean anything, my leaving her and the kids.
“I wrote you every day,” I said. “I called you at least four or five times.”
She buried her face in my arms. “I know,” she said. “I was just never sure you were coming back. I don’t care about anything, I just love you. I just want you with me.”
“Me too,” I said. It was the easiest way to say it.
She wanted to make me something to eat and I said no. I took a quick shower and she was waiting for me in bed. She always wore her nightgown to bed even though we were going to make love and I would have to take it off. That was her Catholic childhood and I liked it. It gave our lovemaking a certain ceremony. And seeing her lying there, waiting for me, I was glad I had been faithful to her. I had plenty of other guilts to handle, but that at least was one I wouldn’t have. And it was worth something, in that time and that place. I don’t know if it did her any good.