Love Warps the Mind a Little Read online

  So there I stood, a philanderer in cotton briefs, toothless, penniless, and a soon-to-be charity case at City Hospital, if I was lucky I noticed clumps of my hair at my bare feet, on the sink, on my shoulders. Must have been, I thought, the shock of the fractured teeth. My fingers felt brittle, like if I touched anything, they would break off. All I could do was cry.

  Judi shook me awake. Laf, you okay? she said. I touched my head, clicked my teeth. I thanked Judi. Do I look all right? I said. You look like you always do, she said, which was good enough for me. I nuzzled into Judi’s back. She said, You’re drenched. Actually, this is a dream that I pull on myself with some regularity, and I always fall for it. Judi had explained lucid dreaming to me once, showed me how I could take control of the imagery if I wanted to. It didn’t work for me. Here I was, manipulated yet again by my unconscious. It made me feel better to speculate that Kafka rattled himself awake with cockroach and secret police dreams. Still, maybe if I called the 1-800-ROGAINE number, I’d have one less anxiety to torment myself with. And then phone Dentaland.

  At breakfast I finished Judi’s poached egg for her. Said she felt bloated. She took Pepto-Bismol with her orange juice. She reminded me to call my father, and would I do a load of wash? Whites, she said. She left for work. I poured myself a cup of coffee and called Florida.

  My mother answered. “Maravista, could you hold, please.” I heard a click and then Glen Campbell singing “Wichita Lineman.” I considered hanging up. When I was young, my father would pretend not to know me. He thought this was funny We’d be at Spag’s buying nails and batteries, and he’d turn to me and say, Whose little boy are you, handsome? I’m yours, Daddy, I’m Laf. He’d smile and say, Have you seen my little boy? I know he’s here somewhere. He’d keep this up until I cried.

  “Thank you for holding. How may I help you?”

  “Mom. It’s Laf.”

  “Laf, is that you? Edgar tells me you’re out of your mind.”

  “How’s Dad?”

  “Did you leave that lovely girl you married?”

  “Martha.”

  “For a dying man, your father’s doing remarkably well. You know how he is, always philosophical about everything.”

  “Can I talk with him?”

  “He’s sleeping.”

  “So how are you doing?” I heard a click.

  “Laf, hold on a sec.”

  My mother came back on the line to tell me she couldn’t talk right now. I gave her Judi’s phone number. She said she’d call if she could find a second. Tell Dad I called, I said.

  I got to work. Theresa’s kids were with their grandmother for the night. Theresa and Dale were at the Cattle Baron for steaks. This was their one-month anniversary. Theresa smiles at the waitress and orders a vodka martini. Dale says he’ll have an unsweetened iced tea. With lemon, please. The waitress, Tammy, says, Thank you, Mr. Evans. She was a student in his microeconomics class last semester. His name’s Dale Evans, like the cowgirl. I wasn’t sure if I liked that. I know he doesn’t, has had to put up with too many jokes in his life. I was still a bit addled from the dream and the parental conversation. Dale and Theresa sat for several minutes without talking, fiddling with menus, looking for some insight into the entrées, I suppose. I was having trouble concentrating. I have mornings like that. Finally, Dale says, The prime rib looks good.

  Theresa says, It’s not enough that you love me, Dale. You have to love the children, too. Dale wishes he did. He nods. The kids treat him like an ogre, won’t come near him. He figures he’s just unnerved by them, and he’ll eventually relax into a nice easy relationship with them. Theresa says, You know, you could spend the day with Caitlin (the girl’s new, tentative name). Peter might be too much to handle right now, she says. Dale says, Maybe a movie to start. Take her to Mladinic’s Bakery for lemonade and Paris buns. The phone rings. Not in the restaurant, but in the living room.

  Judi told me she was going to Provincetown for two days. The Associates had scheduled an appointment with a really hot consultant/psychologist who was going to help them with their counseling model. She told me the four of them were right then into a heavy brainstorming session and could I please call Dr. Stouder for her and reschedule her pelvic exam. I said I’d be happy to perform the exam and I could fit her in today and I would accept co-payments. Funny, Laf, she said. Did you start the laundry? Next thing on my list, I said. Do you want to come to P-town with us? Of course I do. Wednesday and Thursday, she said. I said, I’ll put Spot in a kennel. He’ll probably enjoy the company.

  I called Stouder and got Judi an appointment in three weeks. Then I called Dentaland. They told me that Shimkoski was no longer affiliated with their practice. What was I supposed to do? Well, we can set you up with Dr. Calcagni or Dr. Vigeant. The receptionist wouldn’t state her preference. I want someone good at repairing shoddy crowns. Is this Mr. Proulx? Yes, it is. We went with Vigeant. I thought I heard someone talking to Spot. Mr. Lesperence, I figured, trying to convince Spot that vinyl was better than candy, I dumped the whites into the washer, poured in the Tide, set the timer.

  14.

  Down the Cape

  JUDI’S CONSULTATION WAS SCHEDULED FOR TEN AT THE PSYCHOLOGIST’S EAST End home in Provincetown. We left at six A.M. Judi drove. I remembered this was Wednesday, and I was supposed to be meeting Francis X. at Moynihan’s tonight. Shit! I remembered my father and his impending operation and his possible, though unlikely, phone call. Martha would want to know that he’s sick and all. I should tell her. And then I remembered the doleful look in Spot’s eyes when I dropped him last night at Aesop’s Fabled Animal Hospital.

  Judi said, “I have a story you can write.”

  “Say what?”

  Judi turned the radio down, then off. “Two guys, lovers, and one of them has the AIDS virus and the other doesn’t.” She looked at me. “They are the same as married,” she said. “They’re monogamous, live together, joint bank account, the works.”

  I waited to hear about the trouble, which I assumed would be dreadful.

  “The one who is not HIV-positive wants to be infected by the other.”

  My first thought was, Why? But first, the plot. I said, “And the lover doesn’t want to do that.”

  Judi nodded, raised her eyebrows. “And it’s causing problems. They fight about it all the time. It’s jeopardizing the relationship.”

  I said, “The one thinks it would be murder. How could you kill someone you love?” And the other? I thought.

  “The uninfected one thinks it would be romantic,” Judi said. “Eventually they would be sick together, he figures. ‘Poisoned by love,’ he calls it. He told me, ‘What’s to live for after forty anyway? You’re not pretty anymore. Your body’s lost its buff.’ ”

  I supposed it could be romantic in a Sorrows of Young Werther way, but Jesus Christ! I shook my head. There’s so much of the world I know nothing about. I told Judi she was right. This would make a strong story. I’d have to think about it.

  Judi and I checked into a B&B on Shankpainter Road. Josh, Ron, and Mark had already arrived. Albert was due this evening—couldn’t get out of work. The consultation sessions were scheduled for ten to five today and tomorrow. We’d party Thursday night and stay over till checkout on Friday. When they all headed off for work, I walked down Commercial Street. I stopped at Spiritus Pizza for a cappuccino, sat on the sidewalk and drank. Watched the people drift along. Stanley Kunitz walked by, I swear to God. Black sailor’s cap, Birkenstocks with black socks, a leather bag over his shoulder, smoothing his mustache with his thumb and index finger. I love Provincetown.

  I wound up in the Fo’c’sle at a quiet table. I ordered a draft and called Francis X. One of his kids answered. I said, Hi, is this Kevin? He said, No. Timothy? No. Who is this? I said. This is Eamon. I asked Eamon if his daddy was home. He wasn’t. I told him to give his dad a message that Laf would not be able to meet him at Moynihan’s tonight. Okay? Okay. I said, Did you write it down, Eamon? No. I said, Who
am I, Eamon? When he didn’t answer, I said, I’m Laf, a friend of your dad’s. Yes, Laf, like ha-ha-ha. I made him repeat the message.

  Someone played Neil Young on the jukebox. “Helpless.” I looked over at the window booth and saw Martha and I at twenty-three. We’re sitting there, sunburned, shoeless, dreamy. I shook away the image. My story: All Dale can think about these days is Peter at thirty still in the room upstairs, still rolling toy trucks along the floor, making engine and brake noises, still spitting up his vegetables. I make him think about Theresa and how she’s made him feel like a kind and generous loving person. She’s made him better than he is. What if she weren’t in your life, Dale? Dale thinks maybe Peter should be institutionalized. They could find a real good place, the best doctors. I tell Dale not to bring this up to Theresa. I know what will happen if he does. Whose story is this, anyway? Mine or theirs?

  I ordered another draft and called my father. While I waited for the answer it occurred to me that maybe my father was not sick at all, that this was another one of his jokes. My mother transferred me to my father’s extension. His voice was reedy, shrill almost. He told me he was happy I called. He asked where I was calling from. Do you remember, he said, when we fished off the pier in P-town and you caught a sea robin? Ugly little fish. I didn’t remember, but I told him I did. We had a great time that vacation, he said.

  “How are you feeling, Dad?”

  “Temporary” he said.

  “Are you in pain at all?”

  “More weak than hurt.”

  I asked him about the weather down there. He said it was a furnace. I listened to his breathing.

  He said, “You and Martha having trouble?”

  I told him we were.

  “Those things happen,” he said. “Do what’s best.”

  My mother cut in on the line. “That’s enough, you two,” she said. “Your father needs his rest.”

  I wished him good luck, and said I’d call late tomorrow to see how things were going. “So long, Dad.”

  “I love you, boy.”

  Judi woke me around six. You’re doing a lot of sleeping today, she said. I blamed it on afternoon beers. She told me they were all going to Ciro and Sal’s for supper with Lodi and did I want to come.

  “That’s a city in New Jersey.”

  “Lodivicius Puusepp,” she said. He was born in Estonia, for your information. Get dressed,” she said. “You’ll really like him. He fills a room.”

  I knew I wouldn’t like him, and I was right again. Lodi looked like a wolf—icy blue eyes, luxuriant gray hair and gray beard. White, collarless dress shirt, white slacks, huaraches. Manicured nails. Judi couldn’t take her eyes off him. She hardly touched her abbàcchio brodettato. Albert entertained us with stories from the Worcester Housing Court, where he worked as a clerk. Tenants raising livestock in their kitchen, landlords dousing back porches with gasoline, and so on. Josh suggested we all go dancing at Piggy’s. Albert voted for the Atlantic House. Lodi excused himself and said he had reading to do. Judi and I walked back to the B&B in silence.

  In bed, I tried to imagine just what a bypass operation might look like. I tried hard to remember ever being with my parents in Provincetown. Was I blocking it out and maybe any other warm memory of my father with it? Or was he lying about it? Or maybe not lying, but confused. Maybe Edgar caught the fish and it was at Nantasket. I remember going there for the day, getting sunstroke on the beach and sick on the rides. Judi, Martha, Dad, and Guilt were all in bed with me.

  15.

  To the Lighthouse

  I ASKED JUDI IF I COULD USE THE CAR, TOOL AROUND A LITTLE. I WAS NOT INTO sunbathing the day away with Albert. That was fine with her. Meet us at The Moors if you want to eat supper with us. Around six, she said. I drove by Race Point and Herring Cove, reminding myself of past visits, of camping out in the dunes along the bike path for a week, of sleeping in culverts to stay out of the rain. I headed south through Truro to Well-fleet. I was on my way to find Martha, to speak with her if I could. I wanted to know if she was all right, if she was getting along. And what would that mean if she were? That I wouldn’t have to worry about her anymore? And if I learned that she was not okay, what then? I hadn’t thought this out.

  It was close to noon. I figured my father was lying on an operating table with his sternum cracked open. How could I do this anyway? Talk to Martha, I mean. Walk up to the cabin, pound on the door like the person from Porlock, rouse her from her reverie, say, Martha, it’s me, open up? Martha, I’d say, my father is dying, and me, I don’t know what I’m feeling. Scared, maybe. How are you?

  I pulled off Ocean View into the dirt road and idled by the scrub pines. I saw our Impala in the driveway alongside a second car, a boxy, brown Japanese model. A woman’s bathing suit and several beach towels hung drying on the clothesline that ran from the house to the white pine. A clutch of rocks and shells lay by the outside shower. The hammock was empty. I wondered who these visitors in the brown car might be. I heard no voices through the opened windows. What to do? I hadn’t expected company. At that moment the German shepherd from next door came tearing out of his yard. He charged the car, growled, bared his teeth by my door. I should have killed him when I had the chance two years ago, that time he went after Martha’s niece Lexie. I had the Alpo, the strychnine, everything. Now I was unnerved. I backed the car up a bit, cut the wheel, and floored it at Baron. He dove into the pines, the bastard. I backed out onto Ocean View.

  I parked in the beach lot and walked down the dune to the shore. I looked around. No Martha. I walked a quarter mile north and back along the surf, but couldn’t find her. I did see the family from Connecticut that comes every year—the Belinkys. Etai, Sheila, and their fat little twin daughters. Etai waved, but I pretended I was someone else, and I was beachcombing, and I dared not look up from the sand and chance missing the perfect sinistral whelk. I didn’t want the senior Belinkys walking over to Martha’s saying, We saw the son of a bitch on the beach just as big as life. And he waves to us like we’re on his side, you poor dear. Better they say: Strange, we saw this shell collector at the beach who looked kind of like what’s-his-face.

  I drove into town and sat on a bench in front of the Lighthouse. I saw Mary Oliver buying The New York Times at the News Store. I saw Howard Zinn scraping gum off the sole of his Teva with a Popsicle stick. I saw Sylvia Plath’s mother walking a calico cat on a leash. I saw Perry Como smoking a cigarette. You wouldn’t expect that, would you? I saw Larry Bird duck his head and walk into a gift shop. I saw John Kennedy, Jr., and Daryl Hannah sharing a pistachio ice cream cone on the Town Hall lawn. I saw Peter Jennings check his reflection in the ice cream shop window. Norman Mailer drove by in a Range Rover and honked at two kids rollerblading in the street. They gave him the finger. The bass player from J. Geils walked his kids into the bakery. He’d put on a lot of weight.

  I poked around town. I did not buy saltwater taffy or postcards of the National Seashore or a T-shirt with “Wellfleet” across the front. I didn’t buy varnished seashells or a plastic lobster. I didn’t buy sunglasses or sunscreen or temporary tattoos or a whale-watch video or a New Age audio tape or a stuffed puffin. At five o’clock I went into the Lighthouse, sat down at a small corner table, and ordered a pint of Bass ale and oysters rancheros. Thursday night is Mexican Night at the Lighthouse.

  I tried calling Florida while I waited for my food. I got the night clerk at the Maravista, a guy named Guy Duplessis. I explained who I was. He hadn’t heard any news. I told him to be sure to tell my parents that I called. I ate, drank a couple more drafts, took out my notebook. Marty Robbins played on the stereo. Dale liked Marty Robbins, Ferlin Husky, Kitty Wells, the Sons of the Pioneers, George Jones. Obviously, I was not meeting Lodi and the Holistics for supper. Just when I was trying to decide my strategy vis-à-vis Martha, Martha herself walked into the Lighthouse alone, spotted me, said something to the hostess, and came over to my table. I capped my pen. I said, Hello.

  “You�
��ve got your goddamn nerve,” she said.

  In a fraction of a second, I was able to take offense, feign innocence, create excuses, drop the charade, relax, and offer Martha a seat. She looked at the chair. I told her I was there alone. I ordered her a drink, a Midori sour. One summer that’s all she drank. The summer we went to the Wellfleet drive-in about every night, the summer she threw the seagull salt shaker at me because she wanted help cleaning the kitchen and I wouldn’t stop doing the crossword puzzle. Caught me on the cheekbone. Instead of flying into a rage, I let the blood drip onto the newspaper and blossom there like little rosettes. Martha told the waitress that she wasn’t hungry. She sat, held her purse on her lap with both hands, like maybe it was helium-filled and would float away if she let go. I wanted to ask her who owned the brown car.

  On the only camping trip we ever took together, Martha and I drove to a state park in the White Mountains. I’d borrowed a tent and a propane stove from Francis X. I was hoping that a weekend in the forest primeval might awaken a pastoral urge in Martha, and this might lead to a consideration of living the simple life, quitting work, moving north to some farmland near a lake or the ocean, do some simple farming, work enough to stay alive. We would be like Helen and Scott Nearing, I figured. Well, I pitched the camp. I cooked Spam and eggs, hot dogs, pancakes, and hamburgs on the stove and ate them alone. I built a campfire and roasted marshmallows. I slept in the tent. Martha stayed in the car and read Vogue and Middlemarch that first day. At ten, she started the engine and drove away. She checked into a motel for the rest of the weekend. Martha had taken her stand against nature and the simple life. And now she had that same combative look on her face.