My American Unhappiness (22 page)

I answered the door but did not let her into the apartment. I considered her an enemy.

"You should have come," Jeanette said. "Hal and Malcolm played 'Anna Begins' by the Counting Crows. Except instead of the name
Anna
they put in the name
Valerie.
Everybody was crying."

"Sounds very nice," I said.

"I'm supposed to see if you're okay," Jeanette said. "Everyone wondered where you were."

"I'm fine. I'm reading. I'm carrying sixteen credits this semester, all of them in literature and philosophy. Right now, I'm engaged in Fowles's
The Magus,
which is no small feat. Have you read it?"

"No," she said, looking down at the book in my hand. "It looks like you're reading Rilke, not Fowles."

"Well, thanks for bringing these back," I say. I was about to close the door when Jeanette put her arm out and blocked me.

"Don't blame me for this," she said.

"Blame?" I said. "There's no emotion more futile than blame."

"What?"

"'When the wine is bitter, become the wine.'"

"What?"

"Rilke."

I shut the door.

Strangely, Valerie never returned to Ann Arbor, not to my knowledge. Nobody even came to get her things. She simply allowed me to consider her dead and moved on to some sort of different life. Did she marry somebody else? Transfer to a new college? Attend graduate school? Leave the country? I have never really known what became of her, and so I was able to perpetuate the myth she created. She was dead; I was a young widower. I called my parents and told them what had happened. They had never even met Valerie. My mother sent me a copy of C. S. Lewis's
A Grief Observed,
with the touching inscription
Although I never met Valerie, my heart breaks for you. Come home soon. Love, Mom.

The autumn crept on, for me, with the slowness of monastic life, partly because, for most of that fall semester, I lived like a monk. I read constantly, wrote papers of inexplicable ambition and length, and subsisted largely on tea and bread. For a course on Chekhov, taught by a lovely and compact woman from Oxford on whom I had a delusional crush, I wrote a forty-four-page paper; the assignment asked for five. For a course on Thomas Merton, I wrote a thirty-nine-page essay detailing the rise of a "New American Mysticism" that was linked to the environmental movement. Occasionally, I'd have a hundred dollars' worth of Chinese food delivered from Dinersty, a dozen small cartons in greasy paper bags, and I'd eat out of those for a week or so. I had no idea what to do with Valerie's (alleged) ashes and for weeks I wandered around Ann Arbor in the late afternoon, trying to decide on a spot: the Arb, the Diag, the Law Quad, the dumpster of the Fleetwood Diner? None of them seemed sufficient—neither sacred enough nor ironic enough. Valerie would have appreciated either tack, I was sure. I thought about honoring Valerie's twisted sense of humor by scattering the ashes in a most inappropriate place—an Arby's trash can, the floor of Blockbuster Video, the bathroom of the Brown Jug—but this seemed inappropriate even to me.

The river Seine seemed the only logical place, and the grand gesture of this maudlin trip seemed to be the only way to continue to pretend that I was a grieving widower and that Valerie was, in fact, dead. Paris was the closest thing to sacred ground our relationship had. Thus, during Thanksgiving week, I found a cheap ticket through the student travel office, a direct flight from Detroit to Paris. As painful as it was, I stayed again in the Hotel Cambrai, and on my first morning in Paris, I woke before dawn and executed my inevitable chore. I threw in the small wooden box as well. And then it seemed to me that she was really dead, and that there was nothing suspicious about the story of her death at all. I decided, well, that I believed it; everything, every errant or odd detail suddenly seemed wholly logical and true.

I had three days to kill after my grim Parisian errand was completed, and so that afternoon, I went to a small brasserie and drank too much red wine. I met a woman there, the first single woman I saw who spoke English, a thirty-two-year-old American named Emily who was getting over a divorce.

What happened with Emily in Paris was remarkable. We ravaged each other out of some strange grief. We were not tender with each other; we told each other very little, in fact, about ourselves. But we spent most of those three days together, in my small hotel room or in the flat she was renting. We drank, smoked, ate vast amounts of food, and screwed. I felt a little like Henry Miller, except we practiced safe sex. I didn't want the clap.

Emily and I had not even exchanged contact information. On our last night together, we agreed that what we had was nothing special, and to try and rekindle it in any way at any later date would be disappointing and mad. She walked me out to my cab, gave me one of the most memorable kisses of my life, and sent me off to the airport. I think of her now, of course, on occasion, and I wonder. But that story is neither new nor unique.

I returned to Ann Arbor with my appetite restored and finished my senior year of college in a decadent litany of books read, meals eaten, wines consumed, cigarettes smoked, beers drained, and women bedded. Something about my status, as a young widower still in college, had made some women feel both curious and generous by the winter semester. I even slept with a few of Valerie's old friends, usually at the end of a long tearful and drunken conversation about the unfairness of life. Those of them who knew Valerie was still somewhere, alive, probably slept with me out of pity. Never underestimate the aphrodisiacal value of pity.

After a few nights with each of these women, I grew distant and rude and accused them of seducing me (almost always a distortion of major proportions) and disgracing the memory of my dead wife. Something cruel and inexplicable had taken root inside my darkest places, and I was able to go from unbelievably sensitive to unbelievably mean and vindictive within one short week. By the time I graduated from Michigan that May, I had lost most of my friends, and moving back to Madison seemed like the only real option I had.

And now, in front of me, her picture, very much alive, older than she was then, but still her, the woman I said I would love forever.

I resist the urge to click Accept and then resist the urge to click Ignore and I simply shut down the computer, take three Benadryl pills and one of my mother's Vicodins, and go to bed.

I
WANT TO SPEND
the whole next day in bed, trying to forget the friend request from Valerie Somerville that I received the night before. I awake with a headache and cotton mouth. It's bright in my room, past ten o'clock, I guess, and I know I should call the office and let Lara know I seem to be sick, but all I want to do is sleep. I feel feverish and thin, like a Dostoyevsky character who has committed a heinous transgression, and who awakes the next morning, finally feeling the full weight of his predicament.

Then there is a knock on my door. Harmony comes into the room, frantic. "Zeke, get up. Your mother. She's not acting right."

At the University hospital, Harmony and I sit on the only chairs in my mother's small room. The girls have gone to a friend's house for the afternoon. My mother is sleeping, and Harmony and I listen to the oncologist tell us that there's nothing more to do but make my mother as comfortable as we can. Harmony reaches over and holds my hand.

When my mother wakes, she is fairly lucid and we explain to her that the next step will be hospice care and a vigorous regimen of pain management.

"I don't want the girls to see me in that stage," she says. "They've had enough sadness for one life. I don't want them to remember me unconscious and wheezing, a bag of bones that shits herself and wets the bed. I'm not going to do that."

My mother wants to go to the hospice facility, not back home. She wants to die there. For her, she says, it's an issue of dignity. She doesn't want her son to have to help her die. She doesn't want him to wake up at night and change her sheets, bring her ice chips.

"This is a job for a stranger," she says.

I try and disagree with her, but as I talk, I see her side of the equation and I decide that there is no reason for me to try and be a hero.

"Let's have one farewell dinner with the girls," she says, "if I can manage that, and then I want them to go to Michigan and start their new life with Harmony and Malcolm. I don't want them waiting for me to die. It'll be easier on them if they have all of their new routines in place before I go. They don't need a funeral and a new school in the same week."

My mother's voice is weak, and when I try to interrupt her, she holds up her hand as best she can. I take it.

"Zeke, I don't know how much longer my brain has. This is what I want done. Let's not wait to discuss it until I have a stroke or something, okay? This is how I want things done."

That evening, after we leave the hospital, after Harmony and the girls order pizza and put in a new Hannah Montana DVD, I head for the Starbucks in Fitchburg in the hope that Minn has returned to work. What if I just tell her my situation? "Minn," I will say, "my mother is dying and if you agree to marry me, my nieces will stay in my home." A woman I don't recognize is manning the front counter, and two men staff the drive-through. Another woman, clearly not Minn, serves as the floater, currently helping her colleagues steam vast amounts of milk.

I ask the barista at the counter, a gray-haired and attractive woman of sixty, if Minn might be working.

"No," she says. "No, she's not here. She's out of town."

"Oh? Will she be gone long?" I ask.

"I think she went to Africa," the woman says, then calls out over her shoulder, "Hank, did Minn go to Africa?"

"I think so," the man named Hank lamely offers. "Or Chicago."

"When is she coming back?" I ask.

"No idea," the woman says.

It occurs to me that the woman could probably go back to the manager's office and consult the schedule and give me some idea of Minn's anticipated return. But it also occurs to me that this might be unbelievably creepy, even if I hint at the fact that I have an intimate relationship with Minn.

A woman walks into the Starbucks in a fetching coat, one I recognize as a wool cashmere plaza coat, charcoal color, from J. Crew's most recent catalog. I step aside and motion for her to go ahead and place an order, but just before she begins to speak, I loudly interrupt her and say, "A tall chai, extra hot!"

She looks at me, a bit dumbstruck, and says, "Pardon?"

"That's what you were going to order, correct?"

The barista behind the counter calls out for Hank, who comes menacingly to the front register and crosses his arms, tilting his head in a sort of gesture of disbelief.

"What?" says the woman in the J. Crew wool cashmere plaza coat.

"I guessed your order," I say. "You were about to order a tall chai, extra hot, weren't you?"

"No," she says. "What's wrong with you?"

I shrug. "Well, excuse me then. It's a small game I like to play. It can often be amusing. I am uncannily good at it."

Everybody gives me an annoyed stare and I head for the exit as I hear the plaza coat woman say, "Tall coffee, room for cream, please."

***

There is a sort of foreboding feeling that creeps into my gut as I make my way back to downtown Madison, and as I approach Park Street from Fish Hatchery Road, I make the decision to go and see Mack and Joseph at the bookstore.

Mack is pricing remainders at the front table of the store, and he stops to give me a warm hug and fetch me a cup of coffee from the back room. I don't have the heart to tell him it's undrinkable, so I sip at the burned and bitter swill.

"So what's new?" Mack asks.

"Well, a lot."

"Did you propose to any of your, um, prospects yet?"

"Well, no. It's complicated. The waters are muddy," I say.

Just then Joseph enters the store, holding a plastic bag.

"Zeke," he says, "I've been meaning to find you today."

Joseph hands Mack the plastic bag, which I notice contains a bottle of Maalox.

"What's the matter?"

Joseph crouches down a foot or so and begins to whisper, though as far as I can tell, nobody is in the store save Mack.

"These guys who came in the store the other day. The ones who were messing with you? And with me? You have to be careful, okay?"

"Why?" I ask.

"Because they're serious. I've been making some calls, and I think these guys are for real. I think you're playing with fire here."

I see Mack roll his eyes and move toward another part of the store. "He's paranoid," Mack sings, as he walks away. "He's crazy!"

"Trust me, Zeke. Just promise me you'll be careful. Call me immediately if they come and see you again, all right? I'll have more information soon. Real soon. This has something to do with Congressman Leatherberry. I've called an old college friend who works at the
Washington Post,
and he's convinced of it."

"Joseph! Don't do that! Don't get the media involved!" I say. "My friend H. M. can't be exposed."

"I'm only trying to help," he says. "Do you own a gun?"

"I don't," I say. "Jesus!"

"Neither do I," he says, "but I will try to get you one."

Joseph heads off to the back room, and Mack comes over and motions for me to follow him to the plush chairs in the store's atrium. We sit down.

"He's sort of crazy," Mack says. "I think he's overreacting."

Mack pulls a small flask from the pocket of his blazer. Vodka. He takes a sip and passes it over to me.

"It's not classy," he says, "but I figure you might need it."

"I do," I say. "Definitely. My mother is in the hospital. This is it."

"Oh, dear," Mack says.

"And I have nobody to marry, obviously, so I lose the kids."

"Shit," Mack says. "Goddamn it. What can we do?"

"Just sit with me," I say. "Sit here and get drunk."

"You've come to the right place," Mack says. "Why don't I get some glasses though? And some limes?"