“The score,” the megaphone on the ferry around Manhattan said, from time to time, without further explanation, “is one to nothing.” To the foreigners, unaware perhaps that a World Series was in progress, this may have seemed an obscure instruction, or a commentary on the sights. “In the top of the fifth,” it said, with some excitement, as we rounded Wall Street, “the score is five to one.”
When Gregor Imelda from San Diego arrived at the wedding breakfast outside Greenwood, Mississippi, we realized what a mixed group we have become. Imelda itself is not Jones exactly, but we were doing introductions by first names. “Gregor, this is Inge. Inge, Greg. Gregor, Carlo, Didi, Dibo, Idris, Jude, Vlad, Ara, Si, Matt, Dommy, Elio, Gregor. Arne.” It sounded like a countdown on Ellis Island, or in Babel. Or one of those nonsense marching chants for the tribes of boys in summer camp. My brothers’, I remember, was Hippta, minnega, zinnega, honnega; Zopta bumbalaya hoc. Jude and Vlad are married to each other, which makes it hard to tell just from their names which one is which. Gregor sorted it out. He had eggs and bacon. There was kudzu growing outside the veranda. Beyond that, tall pines and Spanish moss. There were plaques commemorating dead dogs on many flagstones. “Morton, Great Dane, 1937.” “Muffie, Spaniel, 1941.” Dommy, whose mother was a maid, or a domestic, or whatever they then called it, was uneasy about the blacks, whom we seemed to be calling staff or help. None of us is leading quite the life we were at all prepared for. We were born in Beirut, Boston, Albuquerque, Rome, the Bronx, Antibes, Ontario, Tel Aviv. Vlad is a resident in orthopedic surgery. He has a scar on his hand from the day an eccentric surgeon in a temper slapped him with a scalpel. Some of us are vegetarians. Some drink. Some take pills. It is possible that we have, separately, acquired the capacity to say a qualified No to any going, too going, concern.
Dispersed as we all are, though, what we seem to have entirely in common is a time, a quality of meaning no harm, and a sense that among highly urban and ambitious people we are trying to lead some semblance of decent lives. Marriages of the second house break up. A couple may study blueprints for this second house, and build it, or they may buy a farmhouse that is very old. A trailer, or a diner, or a diner in a trailer, always seems to materialize across the road from this second house. Even if it doesn’t, by the end of summer, wife and children do return to the first house in the city. The husband borrows an apartment or moves to a hotel. Not in every case, of course. In a lot of cases. None of us is, however, at all one of those stencil bohemians who live in the Village, cultivate for their public lives something leftish and for their private lives a guru or an analyst, who are likely to be by birth and accent New York, and who are likely at parties to have somewhere in the room a stereo; elsewhere a baby, pale and whimpering, until its mother, having until last week breast-fed it at just such parties as this one, mashes a little Phenobarbital into its bottle and around its pacifier; elsewhere still one large Cuban or Jamaican, who is cooking something difficult, which includes rice and bananas and which, since it is very late and is the only supper, makes it certain that everyone will be joylessly, sickly drunk all evening on the Gallo wine and sangria in paper cups. No. On the other hand, we are all linked to lives of all sorts. Phoebe Aaron, a medieval scholar at our university, used to be listed in the phone book as P. Aaron. She was always being called by heavy breathers. Recently, she moved out to Chicago, as a full professor. She decided to list her full name, Phoebe Aaron. The first time her phone rang in her new place, it was just another breather, Middlewestern. “Hello, Phobe?” he said.
Vlad, who wants to specialize one day in surgery on adult hands, finds himself these days working on babies. There is a relatively new surgical procedure that, if it is performed within fourteen hours of delivery, will keep alive a baby who would otherwise have simply, surely died. After the lifesaving procedure, Vlad gets the baby. He does what he can for it with orthopedic surgery. It is perfect practice for a future with delicate, adult hands. Vlad thinks that, like so many valuable learning experiences, it cannot, cannot in the end ever be or have been worth it. I once saw, however, what might have seemed an altogether hopeless old man on crutches, making his way out of Disneyland, with a large Mickey Mouse balloon.
In Bootsy Garn’s final college year, my first, the girl across the hall from me bought a snake. The girl’s father had been a famous American fascist in the thirties. It was assumed the girl had problems. But pets were not permitted in the dorms. The college knew nothing of the snake. The girl in the room next door to mine bought an alligator. Her father was head of a chemical corporation in Cincinnati. The girl was beautiful. She held séances. She had an Austrian boyfriend, older than she by enough to have been a true Nazi in his time, who threw stones through her window and shouted “Annelise, Annelise,” in a kind of whisper-shout each night while she fed her little alligator halves of worms. Her name, in fact, was Anne. The girls in another dorm bought ducks. The girl three rooms down the hall from me had an orgone box. She believed in silence at breakfast, and used to enforce it by staring craftily at a bread knife with jam on it. An African princess, in her third year and wildly in unrequited love, tried to kill herself one evening by taking an overdose of Epsom salts. She fell in convulsions in front of the dining-room door. Rumors had begun to reach the dean’s office. Something amiss. Anne asked me to hide her alligator in my room for a night or two. I thought, This must be college, what the hell. Three nights I heard dry feet and scales dragging forlornly across my floor. The creature missed the damp. I took it to the bathtub in the early-morning hours. The third day, I left it there. Just before nine, the fascist’s daughter decided to let it be known that her snake was lost. It must have crawled out through its mesh. She thought it had entered the radiator and was now at large in the heating system. It was a very small snake, red, yellow, and black. Bootsy went straight to her room, locked the door, and screamed. For thirty-six hours, she refused to come out. The rest of us, rather dreading the emergence of the snake from our own radiators, avoided our rooms. Bootsy just stayed, and then, the following evening, came quietly out and took a bath. Neither the alligator nor the snake was seen again. Those of us who were studying the English Drama Until 1642 (Excluding Shakespeare) resumed our course. And now I’m here.
The girl in the hallway of Sam’s building, as I was rushing home, was much too fast asleep. She did not look sick. She was not unkempt. She just did not seem entirely alive. “Hey,” I said. “Excuse me. Are you all right?” She just sat there, hands clasped in her lap, large purse by her side. A man walked in from the street. “Excuse me,” I said. “Does this girl look all right to you?” He looked at her a while. She made no flicker of a move. “Do you know her?” he asked. “No,” I said. “Do you?” He shook his head, crossed the hall to the elevator, got in, and was gone. I went back upstairs and rang Sam’s bell. I said, “There’s something wrong with a girl who’s sitting in your hall.” Sam came downstairs with me.