Follow Me (42 page)

Dear Sally, I had a dream last night, I dreamed of you, I dreamed I saw you crossing a hotel lobby, you were pulling a suitcase,
and I asked if I could come along on your trip with you, wherever you were heading. You didn’t know me from Adam, but you
said sure, why not, come along. But then the lobby was suddenly full of people milling around, and you disappeared in the
crowd, I couldn’t find you anywhere. I woke up feeling lost. You know, it makes me think of the common advice that following
a stream downhill will eventually lead you back to civilization. Yeah, you can follow the stream through marshlands and forests,
you can batter your way through alder and willow, and then, surprise, the flow might very well end in an isolated pond and
you’re still lost, you’re lost worse than ever. Well, that dream last night, it was only a dream. I’m in between classes right
now, I’d better get ready, so you’ll find a pause in the tape. I’ll be back later in the day.

I was telling you about my dream, and before that, about your mother. The way life changes, think about it, think about that
feeling on a roller coaster when you’re barely moving at the top of the rise and then you surge toward the bottom of the downgrade.
That pit in your stomach, you don’t feel it because your speed is so fast but because your speed is changing so fast. You’re
at the age where life changes fast, it’s thrilling, isn’t it, you don’t have time to worry about the future, you just go and
go, chugging up to the top of the hill. I used to love that roller coaster there by the lake. You must have ridden on the
Rabbit, the Jack Rabbit, if it’s still in operation, though it might not be, it was a rickety wooden thing when I was young
and that was thirty years ago, more than thirty years. I remember the first time I rode on it, I was with friends, there were
five of us and I ended up being the odd one out, so instead of sitting with one of my buddies I had to sit with an old lady,
my God, a very old lady, she must have been ninety, and she said she had been riding the Rabbit once a year every year, ever
since its first year in operation. That first year a fireman stood up in his seat and was killed when the train went through
the tunnel. The old lady told me about that, I remember, just as our train started to move, she told me about the fireman
getting killed on the Rabbit, and then she said, I’ll never forget, she said, I hope you don’t mind if I scream. And boy did
she scream. We both screamed. Ha. The next time I rode on the Rabbit was with your mother, that same summer, the summer of
1974. I was going to tell you about meeting your mother. I met her that summer at Jeremiah’s. Ask her if she remembers meeting
me. Don’t tell her I told you to, but go ahead and ask her, see if she remembers. Maybe she won’t want to remember. Does she
ever talk about me? God, she was gorgeous, with her eyes, her blue eyes beneath the domes of those wide lids, and her hair,
it was the early seventies and she had long hair, she wore it with the front ends pulled back and held in a clip. She was
nearly as tall as me, I’m five nine, she was, she must be close to that, I think. What can I tell you about your mother that
you don’t already know? I wonder if you find her as hard to describe as I do? Well, it’s no secret that she was a real beauty
with those silky curls, red curls, and her blue eyes always open so wide, as if she were trying to see everything at once.
I used to like to watch her watching others. She paid attention, she looked at the world with interest, with wonder, that’s
a better word, with wonder and curiosity. And when she found a worthwhile cause, she’d throw herself into it. Don’t get me
wrong, she wasn’t a saint, she had her own streak of wildness, yeah, she liked a good thrill. She liked to ride on the Jack
Rabbit. She had a quick temper, it’s true, but she was just as quick to laugh. Does it ring true to you if I say of your mother
that she seemed to experience life with more intensity than most? Honestly, the only time I remember seeing her bored was
once in front of the TV during a sportscast of a golf tournament. She had no patience for golf. I remember she balled up her
sock and threw it at the TV, at the sportscaster. And I swear that guy looked surprised when the sock bounced off the screen,
like he could feel it, he could feel the sock hitting him in the face. We laughed so hard, we couldn’t stop laughing. When
she laughed, I remember, she used to thrust out her tongue, she’d squeeze the tip of her tongue between her lips. We spent
a lot of time laughing together, your mother and me. I can tell you it felt good to be with her. But how to describe what
good means? I’d never felt it before and never since. Your mother was the love of my life. Maybe I shouldn’t admit that. I
had a decent marriage, more than decent, I loved Donna, it was a different kind of love, but I loved her. And I have two wonderful
daughters from that marriage. I wouldn’t trade them for the world. Your mother, though, she came into my life at a time when
I expected nothing. I’d lost so much by then, my father, my brother, and that spring my mother got sick. I didn’t realize
how sick she was. I think she was worn down, worn out. She’d told me she had the flu. When I talked to her on the phone she’d
start coughing, sometimes she couldn’t talk through her coughing and would have to call me back. When I saw her in May, she
looked okay, she was still working, but she had that cough, and then in July I got a call from her friend, who told me she
was in the hospital. Your mother came with me to visit her. Your mother. Penelope. Penelope Bliss. I don’t know how I would
have gotten through that summer without her. I don’t know how I’ve managed without her for thirty years. More than thirty
years. Ask her, will you, if she ever thinks about me. Don’t tell her why you’re wondering. Is she still so angry with me
that she would refuse to let me speak directly to her? I wouldn’t blame her. No, I wouldn’t blame her. Well, I’ll stop here.
There’s more to say, of course, but I’m late for an appointment. I’ll be back soon.

Dear Sally, here I am. What a day, oh, it’s not worth going into, suffice it to say that it took a bad turn when I spilled
my coffee in the car on the way to school. From then on, everything that could go wrong did go wrong. When the bulb on the
overhead projector popped, I knew it was time to give up. Why are we still stuck with projectors in this school? I have friends
teaching in the town next door who have smart boards in their classrooms. How about that. And then I had to go and ask one
of my favorite questions. I like to ask my students to explain why spiders don’t get stuck in their own webs. You know what
one said? One boy, he said they don’t get stuck because God doesn’t let them get stuck. Well, okay, let’s pack up our books
and go home, there’s nothing to learn, everything’s the way God made it so what’s the point of scientific inquiry? What’s
the point of this question? Of all questions? I tell you, there’s a large portion of the population of this country who believe
a question is in its very nature Satan’s work. Don’t get me going. So the spider, what he does, do you know what he does?
He spins his original web of dry threads, threads that aren’t sticky, and then when he’s almost finished he weaves in a gummy
silk, and it’s this silk that catches the insects, this gummy silk that’s only in certain places on the web. If only we were
as intelligent as spiders. Well, anyway, how are you? I hope you’re in love with someone who loves you. I hope nothing comes
in the way of your love. I was listening to Johnny Cash on the drive to school this morning, I was listening to him sing about
love. You are the rose of my heart, you are the love of my life.… Oh, what slush, but I tell you, more and more, I like slush
like that, as I get older, I can put up with slush. I think if I ever tried to write a song, I’d write a slushy song. You
are the rose of my heart, like that. Did you ask your mother about me, by the way? But I guess it would be better for you
to listen all the way to the end of this story before you speak to her about me. By the time you get these tapes, it will
be past Christmas, though right now, Christmas is next week. I have a gift I wish I could send you, but I don’t have the nerve.
I was surprised to find it at Marshall Field’s downtown, the old Marshall Field’s, it’s Macy’s now, but they had the perfume
your mother used to wear. Ah, it takes me back. It takes me back. This takes me back, just talking to you about her. I’m going
to stop now. I’m not in the best frame of mind to continue. This is the first Christmas in twenty-eight years that I’ll be
alone. The girls aren’t coming home. My daughters, my two younger daughters, are out west. You’d like them. They’d like you.
Marcia, she’s the serious one, a whiz at math, she’s in an engineering program at Caltech now, and Tracy, she wants to be
an actress, she’s waiting tables in LA and trying to get auditions. She’s been in one TV commercial so far, a local commercial
for, um, it was for pet food, and Tracy is on a beach throwing a ball to a dog. The dog is the one mostly in the commercial,
Tracy’s only on for a split second. I don’t know, I don’t think LA is the best place for her, but I can’t tell her that. Maybe
you could tell her that. Someday you’ll meet the girls, you’re half sisters, after all. Well, Merry Christmas to you, and
Happy New Year.

Dear Sally. I appreciate your patience and hope you will bear with me a while longer. I was remembering when I heard from
your grandmother, when was it, back in 2000, that your mother’s second marriage had ended in divorce, I was sorry for her.
No, I wasn’t. Well, you could tell her for me, tell her — no, I guess you shouldn’t tell her that. Forget it. Let’s wait.
Maybe you can coax her to reveal things to you without admitting that you’ve heard from me. There’s her side of the story,
there’s mine, we’re lichen, our stories, the way they relate, they remind me of lichen. Lichen, you know, is made up of fungus
and algae, it’s really two plants in one, the fungus is a parasite, it draws the carbohydrates from the algae, but the algae
don’t seem to mind. I like to cite lichen as a prime example of symbiosis. Doesn’t every story involve symbiosis in a way,
a relationship of dependence between parts? Your mother’s story, what she knows, it’s a partial version, but so is your grandmother’s.
The story your grandmother believed, well, it’s not all true. It’s true that she thought it was true. What I mean is, oh,
I’m getting all bollixed up. Your grandmother. Okay, so this is where it gets complicated. Are you sitting down? I’m standing,
looking out the window of my condo, looking at the parking lot. It’s unseasonably warm today, it’s been warm for weeks here.
How about there? But why am I stalling? I’m going to tell you, I can begin to get into the details. Let’s see. In the summer
of 1974, your mother and I fell in love. By August, she was pregnant with you. That November, I abandoned her. I never wrote
to her, never explained anything. I left her to conclude that my disappearance was an act of, of profound betrayal. And that’s
what you were brought up to believe, I assume. Right? How would you ever know different? The real reason I left was a secret
I was obliged to guard for the rest, I thought for the rest of my life. There was only one other person in the world who knew
the truth, what I thought was the truth, and that was your mother’s mother, your grandmother. But wait, let me back up, I’m
getting ahead of myself. I could use a sip of water.

All right, I was telling you about that summer. Your mother worked during the day as a lifeguard at a country club, and after
work she’d come to my room, when I was in town, that is, and not out on some highway in Minnesota or Missouri. It’s strange
that I drove through Missouri but not Kansas. I don’t know why I never drove through Kansas. I was away more often than I
was home, but when I was home I was with your mother, she came over every night. We’d listen to music and take off our clothes
and lie with each other. But maybe I shouldn’t be telling you the details. Is a father supposed to talk to his daughter about
her conception? It was in one of those old houses by the train tracks, those shingle houses in Maplewood, or maybe it was
in the Edgerton neighborhood, or Dutchtown, it could have been Dutchtown. I was renting my rooms by the month back then, and
I lived in three different rooms that year. I was in search of the best room I could get for the money. I wanted a nice room
where your mother and I could listen to music and make love. We were so caught up in each other, we didn’t think about birth
control at first, and when we did, well, it was too late. In September your mother went back to school, but I’d visit her
on weekends whenever I could. And she came home and surprised me one evening in October. As I opened the door to let her in
there was a rumble of a train in the distance, I remember hearing a freight train. And then when we were inside together,
the overhead bulb went out suddenly, just for a second, and then blinked on again. I remember Penny, I called her Penny, you
know, I remember she became vivid with the light, her face was suddenly vivid, and I saw that she was struggling to speak.
She wasn’t upset, though. Not exactly upset. She was frowning, like she was trying to think up a word to a crossword clue.
Does she still love crossword puzzles? There was one time, I remember, when she would do nothing else until we came up with
the answer to a difficult clue. I don’t, I don’t remember the clue, but the word, it was
elaborate
, I mean
e-lab-orate
, we figured it out together. Well, that was a different time. The time she came over to tell me she was pregnant, all she
said was I have something to tell you, and I knew, I… I knew what she had to tell me, and without asking what, exactly, she
had to tell me, I said, We’ll get married, let’s get married. We really loved each other, we wanted to be together forever,
we wanted to have a family together. We weren’t expecting to start so soon, but we figured, we thought we were ready. And
when it came to committing ourselves to each other for the rest of our lives, we didn’t hesitate. We were in complete agreement
that we belonged together. We started to plan a wedding, and then we decided it would be better to elope. You see, your grandmother
had taken a dislike to me, or that’s the impression she gave. I thought she’d decided that her daughter deserved better than
me, and she didn’t want me around. But it turned out she had another reason for wanting to keep us apart. My own mother was
dead by then, she died in July. June was over in July, there’s the irony. Anyway, I was all alone except for your mother.
We were having a child together, we’d marry and start a family. You have to understand, I would have been totally alone without
your mother. I was alone after I left her. I couldn’t bear being so alone. I remember reading a statistic in a magazine around
that time, I remember it said that one in every four Americans will develop a physical, a physical ailment attributed, attributable,
to emotional causes. I don’t know if that was an accurate statistic, but I thought about it, I was thinking about it when
I was driving to Detroit. But here I’ve gone and gotten ahead of myself again. Let’s see, I was saying that we knew by September,
no, by the beginning of October that your mother was pregnant. And we let, gee, it was nearly a month, we let about a month
go by, we kept it a secret while we planned our future together. We were going to elope to New York City, we were going to
drive to New York City and get married and then spend the weekend in the Catskills. We talked about this all month. We spent
every weekend together all through that October. I’d go to see her at school, and we’d stay in a motel. We lived together
on weekends like a married couple. We were going to be married. We were going to be together forever. It seemed, the way I
remember it, when your mother arrived that day to tell me she was pregnant, we planned what we were going to do in an instant,
before we even spoke, in that instant when the bulb went out and then lit up the room, like lightning. Did you know, by the
way, that one of the by-products of lightning is nitrogen, that lightning causes atmospheric nitrogen and oxygen to unite,
forming nitric oxide? I like to talk with my students about this, about how the nitric oxide compound picks up another, an
additional oxygen atom, and forms nitrogen dioxide, and this dissolves in rainwater and falls to the earth. The earth is bathed
in nitric acid, dilute nitric acid, which then unites with chemicals in the soil to produce calcium nitrate, and, and calcium
nitrate, you probably know, is a nutrient for plants, it’s a good and essential nutrient. So during a thunderstorm, the soil
is being enriched. When I think about that moment with the light, the vivid glow of your mother’s face in the sudden light,
it’s like, it’s like my awareness of her was being enriched, I understood her deeply, and I knew I couldn’t live without her.
I mean, I’d already decided that, but I knew it in an absolute way right then. Huh, I never guessed what lay in store for
us. I never guessed. It’s hard to speak about your mother like this. About the two of us together. I think, I think I’d better
stop here, if that’s all right. I’ll say good-bye for now.