Part 19 (1/2)
”Oh, yes,” she said, not tripping over my s.h.i.+ft into past tense. ”Sometimes I think that's why he insisted we move to Asbury ... I would almost even say he was in love!”
My sweet, dopey grin curdled into something more tart. ”I had no idea!”
”Oh, yes!”
I tried listening to some of the lyrics he was warbling and wailing. I had no idea what he was singing. The transience of idols, I thought, maybe not as transient as human lives. I had no idea what we were doing here-we were getting nothing done, not saying anything to curtail Scott's plight. Neither of us was enjoying ourselves, yet I bobbed my head along to the horn-rich rhythm, as though I were back in a seedy bar on Fire Island in the '60s, dancing to race music with other sweater queens amid the required smattering of lesbians whose presence kept the place from getting raided. I wanted a gla.s.s of pinot noir, or something inky and gagging, a Bordeaux-I wouldn't give Dita the satisfaction.
”Catchy words,” I said, imagining a double bourbon on the rocks. There was no reason not to have one. Soon we would hear that the body had been recovered-and I'd never have to look at this woman again or hear her scratchy words seeking out vulnerable places, the soft bruises from nighttime b.u.mps in my bathroom, to grind their way into my flesh forever. I pointed up, saying, ”I guess it's not for nothing that the guy got famous!”
”What?!”
I was glad that she couldn't hear my joshy, Damon Runyon way of expressing a thought so trivial and insincere, and I leaned forward as the music switched to a syrupy, more hushed ballad. ”I'm getting worried. Sitting here, I feel sort of ashamed of us ...”
”I know,” she said, blinking rapidly, ”but first I want to show you Ocean Grove.”
”Would you like anything,” she said when we got to the house, ”w-w-water, whiskey?”
”I wouldn't,” I lied. ”I need to get back this afternoon, to teach an evening cla.s.s.”
”Creative writing,” she said drily, keeping a steady gaze on me, ”on Hallowe'en?”
”Haw. Not even ghosts and goblins have a holiday on Hallowe'en. And you'd be surprised at how many of those want a master's degree and end up taking my workshop.”
”Hang on, I think I'll go up and get more comfortable, slip into my pajama jeans.”
After tarry double espressos, she had walked me through a covered pa.s.sage that cut through the abandoned casino and led to the adjoining community of Ocean Grove where the Methodists still had their summer camps. Along the boardwalk there, hideous condos littered the waterfront in a solid tawdry vinyl-sided wall, yet just in back of them rose the colorful turrets and cyclopean gables of the original Victorian mansions, all kept spit-spot and averting their dignified, make that mortified, stares away from cra.s.s modernity.
We half-circled the block then had come upon the modest and charming dollhouse rows where the town's mere middle-cla.s.s mortals got a slice of the pie. Narrow and all of wood, they were twee; simple keyhole-saw gingerbread latticed the shallow porches. We halted to take it all in. The block was shady, with sun peeking through the elms, and even considering the chill of the advancing day a sense of tranquility hung in the air.
”There's just enough room for two to live civilly and harmoniously together,” said Dita, ”depending on which two. That one, with the vulgar, superfluous fairy lights strung up, and those dumb crystals getting ready to blind whoever pa.s.ses by, is where she lives.”
”She.”
”The girl Scott met,” she said, and when I shrugged, then for added effect dropped my jaw, we eased back into a stroll. ”In truth, I wasn't angry. He met her one summer or the spring before when I was on sabbatical. Anyway, I was in Europe the whole time.”
”In Poland, with your mother and family.”
”But all over Europe. Not the point. I wasn't angry, not even the least bit. Not even jealous. He thought I was both. I figured he might have called and told you.”
”Absolutely not,” I said. ”And was it a tortured, pa.s.sionate, doomed affair?”
”Not at all, Scott was happy. Very happy. And I was happy for him. I thought he might have called you to work it up into some big melodrama in his mind between us, but in fact I was supportive. He wanted me to be jealous, but I was thrilled. He only became angry when I suggested he try living with her. It wasn't necessary-but he could, I said.”
”I think I follow you,” I responded, lightly chuckling. ”That sounds like my Scott too.”
”It was the same summer he and his buddy from old times, Kenny, were going to get their duo going. They played on the boardwalk and Kenny, according to Scott, said Scott's songs were the real thing. They hoped to play clubs next. And so on. I met her. Scott was too proud not to introduce us. I really didn't like the idea, I thought it was unnecessary, no good for anybody, but he insisted, and when Scott insists-yes, you get it, no? Should we go up to the house and knock and ask her?”
”You mean if she's seen Scott?”
”No, I suppose not. You're right. If she was hiding him, I would already know. I gave the address to the police and the Monmouth County Sheriff's Department and put it all in their hands. If they can't find it in one of these crackerboxes it's probably not there. Where would she put him, under the floor? He's claustrophobic. And hates the mother.”
”She lives with her mother?”
As though she'd been rehearsing for days, yet without much talent for this kind of thing-the contemptuous, continental ”nonjealous” bit-Dita droned on at quite a clip.
”How else would she survive? She's too stupid to work, I think in fact r.e.t.a.r.ded.”
It came to me: Asperger Girl. I'd come in at the end, having been away in France for the summer. But of course there were other reasons to tuck it out of my memory too.
At the corner of the next block I saw the skeletons of the camp meeting's tent city. As I understood it-Dita was too busy cycling through her own spiritual cleansing to stop and enlighten me otherwise-the Methodists used these frames and foundations to throw their canvas tarps over to serve as roof and walls. At the backs, fully enclosed structures housed kitchen and bathroom. They slept with only a layer of cloth between themselves and the stars, and it was such a model of goodness and decency, fresh air, cold plunges in the Atlantic followed by a round of singing and revival, that I was saddened. I knew that Stephen Crane, the sickly and slight son of stalwart Methodists, had been trundled about New Jersey among relatives as a small boy after his father's death, and that he'd fetched up in Asbury Park and as a young reporter had walked these streets. At least as much as a writer is made, or has been given in life, he also grabs and molds his material. Crane had been handed an early death sentence with his chronic lung ailments and he was dead from tuberculosis before turning thirty. But before that he'd traveled on freighters and covered revolutions, and he wrote one certifiable masterpiece, The Red Badge of Courage, about a war that ended six years before he was born, convincing everyone including his betters in England, from James and Wells to Conrad and Ford, that since ”Stevie” couldn't possibly be a veteran of the bloodiest conflict in American history, the only reasonable conclusion to draw was that he must be a genius. In Suss.e.x, where Crane was dying and in hock to creditors back home, the greatest English writers of the previous generation had doted on an undersized giant. But no one was going to dote on Scott. I'd once sinned against him, it was true. I'd touched him the wrong way in private, caressing his neck and monitoring his confusion with my dumb puppy eyes, insulting not so much his manhood as his talent and intelligence. I regretted it immediately, and wondered if he'd ever told Dita about it.
”No,” she was saying, ”let's not bother her. You're right, leave her to the church.”
”It's getting cold,” I said. ”Aren't you cold?”
And we walked back to the car, each embarra.s.sed into silence in our way.
She then waited halfway through the drive to the house before saying, ”A-a-after that, I gave him a deadline for moving out. Wr-wr-writers like deadlines, I told him. I thought it would light a little fire under his seat. I wasn't mean about it-you know about the difficulties of dealing with Scott. They had a demo, Songs for Andi, so okay, you won't work, get a proper job, but I'm not going to be around forever, mister.”
I s.h.i.+fted in my seat to get a fuller view of her face, but Dita did not turn. She was keeping her eyes on the road, chin raised, looking out for a calming object in the distance, and I said, ”Well, you've carried the bulk of the burden with Scott, I know.”
”All of it,” I'd insisted.
I snooped a bit in the downstairs, impressed by the Martha Stewart comfort and carefully coordinated colors that read ”mutedly tasteful but unsnooty,” a composition which Scott had brought off. Dita descended the stairs, slinking almost, while rolling up the sleeves of a neatly pressed white b.u.t.ton-down-and wearing a type of pants I'd never seen before. They had the color and st.i.tchedlooking design of jeans, but were made of a soft, stretchy material that clung flatteringly to her hips and thighs. Only at that moment did I begin to believe what Scott had always said, that Dita was full of s.e.xy surprises.
”A-a-and I know, even from what Scott said, but also from reading some of your books-yes, you're shocked that a computer scientist can read words?-but I know that you're a great teacher. I'm ready for a drink. The rest of the day and the evening, I will go back to my funk, and wait by the phone like a good wife. You know, Scott really could not marry me because, irresponsible as ever, he never saw to it to divorce the j.a.panese.”
”So that was it,” I said.
”That was it,” she said, and wagged her finger in the air and led me to the kitchen. ”I will wait for the mister, but only for so long. He has us as he wants us, on the end of a string. But in time, maybe we learn”-she exhibited a maniacal looseness under her own roof, and her language had rounded another bend-”we can let go. Mister doesn't count on that, does he? Maybe he'll be back, maybe not, to see we hold our end of them too?” She swung open a cabinet full of liquor and added, ”Please say you'll join me.”
Some might have called it tempting fate, but judging from Scott's description of Dita-yes, he was here with me still-she had undoubtedly surveyed the situation and looked at it realistically. Only Americans, he might have said she would say, insisted on the sunniest, most optimistic view, and cleared the fleet of bottles from his thirsty eyes.
”Just one, then,” I said. ”I'll have-”
”This is what we make at home in my family,” she said, unsquatting and coming up with an old Gallo jug filled with a clear yellowish fluid. ”Apricot brandy, only it's not really brandy, it's just what we say, and it's peaches. You can't get good apricots: for that you have to be somewhere else-the closest out in California in a grove, but more ideally someplace in Europe, and most ideally in Galicia,” and hauled down two juice gla.s.ses.
She explained the process, involving soaking the fruit in vodka for months before straining off the liquor, and said that of course it was more of a schnapps. ”You like it?”
There was that blessed snap, a lick from the first belt of the day. I'd been careful that morning to have only coffee, half a pot, and for some hours had even believed in the fiction that I might extend that practice as a short-term habit, experiment, ease back into a routine I'd eschewed as equally hopeless years ago, bowing before the muse humbly as a man wis.h.i.+ng to reform, and sweet-talking her and seeing if that got me anywhere. All of it sank foolishly away, my resolve, my hangover logic. Stupid idea. This was lots better, felt a lot more like inspiration. Seduce yourself and screw the muse. Fickle tramp!
We went down to the bas.e.m.e.nt.