Bigfoot Dreams (27 page)

Back in her office, she’s confronted by the mountain of paper amassed over the years. It’s worse than the Basenji Society. She feels the weight of it pushing her down till she’s crouched in an undignified squat on the floor; the idea of sorting and moving it makes her burst into tears.

When at last she stops crying, Vera picks up the phone and, without thinking, dials her parents’ number. She’s thirty-seven, and look who she’s calling for comfort. Comfort and absolution.

When Dave answers, Vera says, “Guess what.”

“Don’t tell me,” he says. “You got a job.”

“I lost this one,” she says.

“Allah be praised,” he says. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” says Vera. “Part of what I told you about, Friday night.” No need to tell him the second part of that story. The Flatbush fountain of youth may have saved Mrs. DiPaolo and Mr. Grossman, but so far it’s done nothing for her.

“Good news,” he says. “The worst that’ll happen is, you’ll start making an honest living. Meanwhile, don’t worry. Money’s no problem. Your mother and I can certainly lend a hand till you get back on your feet.”

Back on your feet—the phrase has a Depression ring. Rows of thirties tin soldiers on pedestals—knocked down, set up, knocked down again. “That’s all right,” says Vera. “They’re giving me three weeks’ pay. And I’ve got some saved up.” That’s one advantage of not balancing your checkbook; for all she knows, it’s true.

“Well, isn’t that something?” Vera can practically see him shaking his head. “You never know how things are going to work out. What looks like a tragedy sometimes turns out to be a blessing. That reminds me of a story.” Vera considers pretending to have a call on another line, but can’t bring herself to do it, and so Dave begins:

“One night up in the mountains near Teruel, the Fascists started shelling our camp. Heavy artillery.” Dave makes whistling rocket noises into the phone. “Lit up the sky like daytime. We knew it was pretty goddamn close, we just didn’t know
how
close till round about dawn the shelling stopped. I went outside to take a leak, walked a couple of steps away from my tent, and I’ll be damned if I wasn’t pissing into a thirty-foot mortar crater.
That
close. That’s how close
you
came to not being here. I stood there looking down in that hole and right then I decided, my whole life after that was going to seem like a gift. A present. A little something extra. Borrowed time.”

“Wow,” says Vera, less amazed by the story than by the fact that she’s never heard it before, never been told of this pivotal moment till now. Could he have been saving it for an occasion like this? Like what? Getting sacked at
This Week
is nothing like almost being blown to smithereens by Fascist mortar fire. What moment will Vera have to show Rosie as the point that made everything afterward seem like a gift, like grace? Is this what’s bothering her? Not exactly. Is it the fact that—no matter how relevant it seems to Dave—her life
isn’t
a story from the Spanish Civil War? That’s not it, either. What’s troubling her is this: How long would all this sympathy and exemplary tales and offers of money last if Dave knew Lowell was back?

“Talk to you later,” she says. “Tell Norma not to worry.”

“
You
don’t worry,” Dave tells her. “You’re still our girl.”

Dave’s story helped, after all. Vera’s decided to let the office go till tomorrow. Maybe a Fascist shell will hit it overnight and solve her problems for her. Besides, if she leaves right now, she won’t have to tell anyone she’s been fired. By tomorrow, when she comes in to pack up, everyone will know.

On her way out, she stops in the coffee room to refuel and finds Mavis and Solomon standing there. Vera pours herself a cup of coffee and, going to the refrigerator for milk, has to reach around Carmen’s giant bag of radishes.

Vera could go for a radish right now. Like poor Louise: chomping it would drown out the noise in her head. She wonders how many radishes it would take to make you feel full. Every time Lowell left, she’d felt a similar urge. Once she sat down on the edge of the bed and ate a giant box of Familia, dry, with a spoon. Like sawdust and putty—
that
filled the hole. Then she’d smoked half a pack of Camels.

“First the good news,” says Vera. “The suit’s been dropped.”

“O-kay!”
says Solomon, grinding Vera against his cameras in an unusually—even by Solomon–Vera standards—awkward embrace.

“Now the bad news,” she says. “You’re going to have to go on without me, men. I’ve been hit bad.”

Is it tasteless to be making wounded-soldier jokes in front of Solomon? No one seems to notice. They’re too busy trying to figure out what she’s talking about. Then finally the howl of outrage Vera’s been waiting for all morning: How could they do this to her? The muttering and gnashing of teeth goes on and on, but not once does anyone suggest doing anything—resigning in protest or even complaining to Shaefer. Vera remembers picketing on behalf of a popular professor who’d been denied tenure. Well, guess what. College isn’t the working world. Suddenly Vera feels so distant from Mavis and Solomon; her ship’s already sailed, as they wave and grow smaller and smaller on shore.

“Wouldn’t you know it?” says Solomon. “The first time anyone hits the nail on the head, they can her. What jerks. I should quit, too.”

“What’ll
that
do?” says Vera. Solomon’s not going to bat for her, just joining the losing team.

“They’ll change their minds,” says Mavis. “Shaefer’s a little hot right now; he’s had a difficult weekend. He’ll cool down. You’ll see. All will be forgiven.”

“Forgive what?” says Vera. “I’m leaving.”

Knowing that she’s coming back to pack makes it possible to leave Mavis and Solomon, to hurry past Carmen. Tomorrow they can all pretend it’s not
adios
, that their friendship will survive outside the office. But Carmen won’t let her by.

“Hey, what are you
on
?” she says. “The coffee diet?”

“That’s right,” says Vera. “I’m going on a long coffee break.
Finito
. I’m through.” Then she turns and hurries out before Carmen can even think of telling her it’s God’s will.

V
ERA HITS MONTAGUE STREET
at a run. She can’t wait to get home—the only thing that’ll make her feel better is finding Rosie and Lowell and hugging them so hard she shuts off the oxygen to her brain and can’t think. All that’s holding her back is the fear on people’s faces as they wheel around to see if she’s chasing them, then look behind her to see who’s chasing her. No wonder joggers wear sneakers. Joggers and muggers, too.

Of course the apartment’s empty; she could have taken her time. A vision of Rosie and Lowell communing with the giant squid brings on a rush of jealousy that makes her feel as if she’s got her wish for a diminished oxygen supply. Telling herself that the city is full of people drinking at lunch, she pours a vodka tonic and sits down to wait them out.

Nothing like jealousy to make the time drag. As the long afternoon stretches on, Vera goes through stages. First hurt, then anger, then worry. She runs through her usual repertoire of threats to Rosie’s life and well-being. Luckily, Lowell’s presence precludes most of them. Even so, things happen. Madmen await little girls in ladies’ rooms where their Daddies would never go, push them in front of oncoming trains with their helpless Daddies right there.

It’s almost six when they finally ring the doorbell; Vera just feels drained. Rosie looks bright-eyed and adorable in her baseball cap, shorts, a green brontosaurus T-shirt Vera’s never seen before. “I forgot my key,” she says. “We stayed out till we were sure you’d be home.”

Is that what they’ve cooked up to tell her? Before she can say she’s been home all day, Lowell’s kissing her. “Sweetheart!” he says. “How was your day?”

“All right,” says Vera. She’s not ready to tell them the truth, and anyway they’re too jacked up to listen. “And yours?”

“Outrageous!” Lowell says.

“Yeah, Mom,” says Rosie. “Really great.”

“I’m worried about that giant squid,” says Lowell. “Looks a little the worse for wear. Well, who doesn’t, right? Or maybe it’s that they’ve got it in a different place, higher up. Not the most flattering angle. But Jesus, those dinosaurs! That big Tyrannosaurus gets
prettier
with age. What I wouldn’t give to saddle up one of them mamas. Giddyap and away!”

Vera’s trying not to think what it means that she’s mated for life to a man whose supreme ambition is to be Fred Flintstone when Lowell says, “Honey, what’s wrong? You look a little down. Hard day at the office?”

“No day at the office,” she says. “I got fired.”

It takes them both a while to process this. Lowell recovers first. “Way to go!” he says, sounding just like that Huey or Dewey or Louie. Rosie’s gone pale.

“What’ll you do?” Rosie asks.

“Win the Pulitzer Prize,” says Lowell. “Your Mom’s going to write the story of the century, and some sleazeball in Hollywood’s going to option it, and your Dad’ll write the screenplay, and then we’re in fatback gravy! Bye-bye Montague, hello Malibu!”

Another variation on the lost Mayan treasure, but updated, and one that Vera so needs to believe, she almost does. She leans against Lowell and he hugs her, Rosie comes over and hugs them both, and for a moment it works. Vera can’t think, can’t worry, can’t feel anything but them. Then Lowell says, “This calls for a celebration! Let’s go to Chinatown! On me! I haven’t been in years. Out where I’ve been, even the Chinese roll their moo shu pork in tortillas…”

While Lowell rattles on, Vera drifts into thinking how the secret, dirty habits of Chinese restaurants are another of
This Week
’s recurring themes. Cat, pigeon, squirrel—writing for
This Week
meant constantly looking out for new, readily available, and disgusting animals to serve up in someone’s sweet-and-sour pork. It’ll take some getting used to, going to Chinatown and just being able to eat.

“Will the ladies be dressing for dinner?” asks the hillbilly John Gielgud.

“Certainly, Jeeves,” Rosie says. Jeeves? Soon “Puttin’ on the Ritz” is coming from the scratchy turntable in Rosie’s room. It’s Rosie’s favorite. Vera’s told her it’s not really a New Wave song. Rosie says she knows. She claims to remember a cartoon she saw—as a child, she says—in which skeletons in top hats and tails danced to “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” then took off their leg bones and arm bones and skulls. Vera can believe it; it does sound like a song for skeletons to dance to. Now Vera does a kind of skeleton cakewalk to her room, where she stares into her closet with the unfocused gaze she ordinarily saves for the refrigerator.

Back in the living room, Rosie’s put on a skirt and pink platform wedgies. Vera feels rather dowdy in her black pegged pants, her black satin thrift-shop baseball jacket embroidered with a map of Vietnam and the logo, “When I die I’ll go to heaven because I’ve already spent my time in hell. Saigon 1969–70.” Only now does Vera realize she’d bought it with Lowell in mind. She’d thought she’d stopped doing that—dressing to amuse him, saving her life up in stories she hopes he’ll find entertaining.

Lowell’s put on a white shirt and tie. “See this?” he says, flapping the tie at Vera. Up close, its little raised dots turn out to be naked girls. While Vera’s looking, he kisses the top of her head. Then he puts one arm around Vera, the other around Rosie, and won’t let go; they have to squeeze through the door sideways. Locking it behind them requires even more ingenious acrobatics.

“The subway’s this way,” says Vera.

“Let’s walk,” says Lowell. “What else are bridges for?”

They walk beside the traffic jam along Tillary Street while motorists glare at them in that furious way drivers watch pedestrians outdistancing them. Then they climb the stairs to the bridge, and they’re up above everything. A breeze blows up here that didn’t exist down below. Lights twinkle in the few windows not still flashing back the last rays of setting sun. The skyline shames every photo, every picture postcard, gives Vera an odd, hollow ache in her stomach.

For some reason she’d thought they’d be alone up here. It’s true no one’s going their way, but there’s a steady procession heading in the opposite direction, Manhattan to Brooklyn, home from work. Young female execs with sporty little briefcases and full dress-for-success summer drag; giggly steno poolers tripping over each other’s stiletto heels; Rastafarian mail-room types passing cigar-sized joints; and, every so often, ashenfaced older gentlemen clawing at their neckties as if it’s the doctor who ordered them to take up walking: mandarins on the Long March. Then Lowell elbows Vera and says, “That’s a lifer, darlin’. Forty years at
This Week
.”

“Not me!” says Vera, feeling as she hasn’t felt since high school, when she’d see workers trudging home and think, Not me! Not me! Where did she think she was headed? Never-Never Land? The planet Krypton? To have grown up in her family and not known that people have to eat and make money and feed their kids! Maybe that was why she chose to ignore it; maybe all children do. They look at their Dads at the end of the day and think, Not me! If there is a natural order, thinks Vera, quite possibly it’s that.

Tonight everything’s conspiring to make Vera feel like she’s back in high school. The soft light, the hint of moisture—seductive and full of promise. She could be sixteen, heading into the city to look for love. Or she and Lowell could be teenage sweethearts, starting fresh but with the advantage of everything they’ve learned since. It’s what every happy idiot wants: To be young again and know what I know now. She feels like they’re in orbit, out of time, and—when at last they touch down on Canal Street—that mixture of relief and loss she imagines an astronaut feels on reentering the earth’s gravitational field. Tonight she’d like to keep that sense of loss at bay. If she dwells on it, all the regrets of the last twenty years will start dancing in front of her eyes like the neon dragons already visible over Mott Street.

Vera can’t figure out why Chinatown’s not more crowded; perhaps there’s a street fair in Little Italy, siren sausage smells waylaying hungry diners on their way downtown. By now every wonton parlor should have a line spilling out on the street, but in fact it’s mostly Chinese families shopping, children playing, groups of older boys and girls checking each other out, pairs of lovers. It feels like a privilege to be here. Passing a fish stall—jumbo shrimp, pans of mussels, flat, big-eyed fish arranged in a kind of mosaic—Vera says, “I should shop here. I forget.”