We’ve come down to the flatland, the ragged end of Fell’s Point, even now dotted with derelict storefronts and shifty, dusty bodegas, shoe stores whose window displays haven’t changed in twenty years. It’s as if there’s a law in Baltimore that gentrification can’t extend more than five blocks in any one direction: a poor city with a pox, an acne spray, of gentility. Chugging past us, though it’s lunchtime, is a school bus filled to the brim, little faces with bright yellow polo shirts squashed against the windows. Girls and boys just a year or so older than Meimei. Kindergarteners. A field trip, is my first thought, but then I remember seeing a headline in the Sun about cutbacks and reductions making kindergarten part-time. They look — is it possible for five-year-olds to look? — weary, and resigned.
You know what I’ve been thinking about? I say to her. The future. The world’s future. I mean, you have to ask yourself, is this world we live in, is this Baltimore, sustainable? I’m taking for granted that in fifty years this spot will be underwater. You have to accept that part. But in the larger sense, I mean, look around you, can you see anything that isn’t some kind of danger sign, some kind of warning?
You really want to know my answer? It’s embarrassing.
Of course I want to know.
Well, she says, it’s Martin. Martin is what gives me hope. I mean, look, I’m a suburban girl. I would never have come back here without him. What I was saying earlier — he has such tremendous confidence. And vision. You know what he says about Baltimore? Have you heard him on this topic? The great thing about a city like Baltimore is that you can get lost here. No one’s paying attention. Where did life begin? It began in the tide pools. The places where things wash up and just sit and get forgotten. That’s what cities are like. We see the donut-hole economy, the collapse of the middle class, the radical disparities of wealth, and he just sees windows, windows, windows of opportunity. I don’t even know what they are. I probably don’t want to know. People talk about the gray economy; well, I know that what he does is gray. But I trust him. He says, the twenty-first century is all about informal networks. All I say is, don’t sell drugs. Don’t sell drugs, don’t sell guns, and don’t sell human beings. But intellectual property? Patents? Copyrights? Proprietary information? I could give a damn. If it comes down to asymmetrical economic warfare, I’m all for it.
The small ax.
Trust a white boy to know his Bob Marley. Yeah. The small ax.
A dusty red Camry festooned with bumper stickers pulls alongside us and slows down — practically, it seems, at my elbow. U.S. Out of Iraq Now. I Love My Country, but We Should See Other People. Nader/LaDuke 2000. I Was at Woodstock and I Vote. Some people just can’t keep their clichés to themselves, I’m about to say, when I glimpse Mort Kepler through the glass, putting a hairy elbow over the passenger headrest and twisting his head, owl-like, to stare at me. As we walk toward the car — too late to change directions, too late to say excuse me and sprint over — he leans over and rolls down the window.
Kelly! Thought you’d have left town by now.
Good to see you, Mort. How’s things?
Figuring out just how far I can stretch my Social Security.
He has a mad grin affixed to his face, a rictus of a smile.
Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?
Robin Wilkinson. Mort Kepler.
Gamely, she reaches through the window to shake his hand. Big fan, she says. Sorry you lost your show. I’m sure it’s only temporary, right? You’ll be back soon somewhere.
Well, he says, still smiling, your friend here didn’t make it easy for me. Not to be rude or anything. Just so you know who you’re associating with.
Nice to see you, Mort, I say, taking Robin’s elbow. And we leave him there, blocking traffic, his emergency blinkers on. Do me a favor, I tell her, don’t look back for a minute. Ignore him.
He was really hostile. I’m surprised.
Did you ever actually listen to his show?
A few times. He struck me as a sort of sweet crackpot type. I always pictured him with a beard, for some reason.
Do you ever notice how easy it is for people his age to be angry, and intrusive, and cruel, and act like they’re doing you a favor? Or, alternatively, like it’s all your fault?
Well, it was the We Generation.
The Me Generation, you mean.
No, the We Generation. As in, we did everything right and you guys came along and screwed it up. As if we voted for Reagan.
She tosses me a smile, sideways, as if to say, this is fun. Too bad we can’t be friends.
We’re crossing the street now to enter Broadway Market, with all its attendant smells, the fresh-roasted coffees, the deli meats, Old Bay, Belgian fries, fresh bluefish and dolphin and skate. I remember, out of nowhere, Adele Patinkin, who I dated for a few months at Amherst, and how we used to go to the Kosher Kitchen every Saturday night for havdalah, the end of Shabbat service, and how a painted box of spices went hand to hand around the room, everyone getting a whiff of cloves and cinnamon, nutmeg and cardamom. Reawakening to the world. Food, it seems to me, and the smell of food, is the world’s great consolation prize, its way of saying, things can’t possibly be so bad. I fall into step after Robin, who looks from side to side, grinning, nearly licking her parted lips, flooded with voracious and well-earned desire, who has forgotten me entirely, for the moment, and I realize that I’ll have to come up with some excuse for having no appetite at all, for needing to leave, abruptly, for needing to sit in my car for fifteen minutes before I can drive, waiting for my starved hands to stop shaking.
24
Out of sight, behind the forsythias at the far end of Paul and Noreen Phillips’s front lawn, the children are singing “Human Nature.” There must be fifteen of them, in a crowd of forty adults, and for the length of the party they’ve been out in the grass, unattended, with a separate buffet and drinks table, playing hide-and-seek, having somersault contests, dance contests, cheerleading demonstrations. Sherry and Tamika among them, of course, almost shoulder to shoulder, clearly sisters, with identical coils of spaghetti braids that never come loose, no matter how vigorously they roll on the grass. Now the whole crowd has disappeared into the gloaming, the pastel May twilight, and snatches of warbly harmony come floating across the grass:
Reaching out to touch a stranger
Electric eyes are everywhere
— I’ve been trying to remember the first time I ever saw his face, Marshall Haber is saying. It wasn’t at the convention. Before that. It must have been in some TV interview, because he was talking. Sitting down and talking. No idea what he was saying, but you could just tell from his manner, his posture, that he had something going on. You could tell by the way he folded his hands in his lap. Control. No unnecessary movements. Right? And this is when he wasn’t even a senator yet.