Yul was doing his level best to contain his glee, but doing a piss-poor job. He was paying lip service to my vexation and indignation at the completely nonironic acceptance of that so-called novel as literature, but I could hear him counting the money. I could also hear him telling me, without saying as much, to grow up. What he said was, “We’re talking about a lot of money here.”
“I appreciate that, Yul,” I said.
“The editor wants to discuss the manuscript with Mr. Leigh. What do I tell her?”
“Tell her I’ll call her.” After he said nothing, I went on. “Tell her Stagg R. Leigh lives alone in the nation’s capital. Tell her he’s just two years out of prison, say he said ‘joint,’ and that he still hasn’t adjusted to the outside. Tell her he’s afraid he might go off. Tell her that he will only talk about the book, that if she asks any personal questions, he’ll hang up.”
“You’re sure about this?”
“I’m sure.”
“Okay then. I don’t mind telling you this is weird.”
“Well, Mister Bossman, I’se so sorry dis seem so weird to ya’ll.”
“You’re a sick man, Monk.”
“Tell me about it.”
I was seven.
The drive to the beach took us along Route 50 which was the slowest straight shot on the planet. We would take two cars, my brother always riding with Father. My Mother drove slowly, Lorraine in the front seat with her, staring at the map, and so we always arrived twenty minutes later. Still, Father would wait for us all to be there before opening the house for the summer. He and Bill would have pulled the bags out of the Willys wagon my father loved so much and have them arranged neatly, ready to be taken inside.
It was June 16, a Saturday morning. I remember that so clearly. It was sunny, but not terribly hot. I was wearing long khaki trousers and a striped shirt that I always hated. It seemed no one had come to the beach yet. The only car parked in a drive was Professor Tilman’s. As soon as Howard let out, he was at the beach. He had no children and his wife had died years earlier, but still he seemed to be able to take or leave company. I couldn’t understand why he came at all since he never left his house except for groceries. Sometimes I would see him sitting at the corner of his porch taking in his sliver of a view of the bay.
“Get that box,” Father said, pointing.
I picked it up and carried it into the kitchen. Lorraine was already sweeping, Mother was putting away dishes and Bill was wiping dust and leaves from the sills of the breakfast porch.
“How do the leaves get in here?” Bill asked, as he always asked.
Father could be sudden. I thought of him as generally a kind man, perhaps because of the way his patients adored him, but living with him was like living on the crater of Vesuvius. Perhaps the comparison would be better made to some dormant or rather sleeping volcano. He wouldn’t exactly erupt, but rumble or hiss, and sometimes you’d miss the event altogether and find yourself detecting a burnt smell, sulfur or just seeing some vapor in the air. To Bill, upon his asking the question, he said, “No house is tight.”
It was not until Father had gone out the front door, to collect the last of the boxes, that we all exchanged fearful glances.
But, in part, that quality of my father’s was one reason I felt so close to him. I admired his intelligence, his sagacity and his convoluted message delivery system. Bill kept his secret that was no secret, Mother kept no secrets at all, Lisa kept secrets that remained with her and Father kept secrets and talked about them all the time. I am convinced of this. I am certain that he told all of us any number of times that he was married to the wrong woman and probably that he had another child someplace.
Later, after a meal of sandwiches, Father and I walked down to the beach. I had to skip every few steps to keep his pace. We waved to Professor Tilman.
“Why doesn’t Professor Tilman go anywhere?” I asked.
“Perhaps because he doesn’t want to,” Father said.
I thought about that and I suppose my silence was a bit loud.
“Is that hard to imagine?” Father asked. “Not wanting to go out?”
I said I guessed so.
We walked out the long pier and looked down at the water. A jellyfish swam by. A small boat motored by well away from us, a crabber checking his traps. I slapped a mosquito and flicked it from my arm.
Father laughed. “They take the blood and leave the itch. It’s a tradeoff. She gets to feed her eggs and you get to remember how good it feels to scratch an itch, how good it felt to not itch.”
“All I know is I hate them,” I said.
“The bluefish will be running in a few weeks,” he said. “That will be fun. Do you think you and your brother can get the boat into the water by yourselves?”
“No.”
He laughed. “I’ll help you in the morning before I go back.”
Rothko: I’m an old man.Motherwelclass="underline" You’re not so old.Rothko: And I’m a sour old man. I’ve taken to this house painter’s brush I found. It makes the edges almost feathery. Funny, eh? A house painter’s brush. I’ll bet that devil Hitler used the very same thing when he was a nasty youth. And here I am with one. I have all these powdered paints and I mix and mix, but are my colors really so different? Are people sick of my panels? I like my early work. This stuff I’m doing now has me depressed.Motherwelclass="underline" Work depressed us all.Rothko: A nice homily from a nice young man.Motherwelclass="underline" Not so young myself.Rothko: And steady. I’ve noticed that about you. I’m planning to take my own life, but you’ve no doubt surmised this. And you fathom that you understand the feeling in some way. Yes, you’re a steady one. Of course, your paintings stink.
In considering my novels, not including the one frightening effort that brought in some money, I find myself sadly a stereotype of the radical, railing against something, calling it tradition perhaps, claiming to seek out new narrative territory, to knock at the boundaries of the very form that calls me and allows my artistic existence. It is the case, however, that not all radicalism is forward looking, and maybe I have misunderstood my experiments all along, propping up, as if propping up is needed, the artistic traditions that I have pretended to challenge. I reread the paper I claimed to dismiss summarily and realized that epiphanies are like spicy foods: coming back, coming back.
Paula Baderman had a smoker’s voice, but she sounded young and spirited enough. She came to the phone quickly when I called.
“Mr. Leigh,” she said.
“Yes.”
“I’m glad we could get together, even if it is over the phone. I just wanted to touch bases with you. You know of course that I love the book.”
“So I understand,” I said.
She paused, leaving a blank between us, then said, “How long did it take you to write it?”
“It took me just a little over a week.”
The quality of her next silence was clear to me. She was surprised, if not put off by my diction, being not at all what she expected. I was not going to put on an act for her.
“A week. Imagine that.”
‘Are there any changes you’d like me to make?”
“Not really. In fact, I think it’s about as perfect a book as I’ve seen in a long while. But I just want to get to know you right now. If you don’t mind my asking, what were you in prison for?”