None of this Ever Really Happened (3 page)

I spent the winter quarter sitting up all night in my tiny
room smoking cigarettes, drinking Nescafé and typing five
rambling, mediocre stories about growing up. Once a week
Tevis and I met late in the evening. The hour was partly because
we were both night owls and partly, I came to realize,
so Tevis would have a reason to open a bottle of Spanish sauterne
that was sometimes not his first. We met in his living
room at first, but his wife, who had correctly assessed the
situation and clearly saw me as a bad influence and facilitator,
would walk through glowering at us, so we moved our
sessions to the detached garage Tevis had remodeled into a
study. It was a small space, and we spent much of our time
there avoiding eye contact. I was like that person you know
who acquires a friend or girlfriend or wife or even a child
because someone else has said that he should, who does and
says all the right things, but who is only painting by numbers.
We sat there time after time on the outside chance that Tevis
might say one day, "He was my student," and I might say one
day, "He taught me everything I know." But that is much too
cynical. Actually, he taught me three very important things:

(1) He taught me about San Miguel de Allende, a lovely
colonial town on the high plateau about three hours north of
Mexico City that has a good school of art and one of music,
some satellite-language schools, a handsome cathedral on a
perfect little plaza, cobblestone streets, cheap inns and posadas,
an English-language bookstore, and enough—but not
quite too many—Americans. Tevis had gone to San Miguel
on the advance he had gotten to write
The Hustler
and had
spent most of his time there filling a drawer with
osos negros,
the little, black plastic bears that came chained to the necks
of vodka bottles. I went there more recently to sit in the sunshine
and to write down a good part of this story that you're
reading.

(2) Tevis also taught me something valuable about the
parts and importance of culture, our culture. At the time I
knew him, he was busy suing a man named Rudolph Wanderone,
whom he claimed had stolen his most valuable creation.
One Sunday afternoon on a porch swing in Lexington,
Kentucky, while he waited to be called for dinner, Tevis had
invented a character out of whole cloth named Minnesota
Fats, who would become the universal prototype of the pool
hustler. According to Tevis, Wanderone had come along and
appropriated the name, and was making lots of money appearing
on television as Minnesota Fats. Tevis was spending
lots of money trying to prove that Rudolph Wanderone was
Rudolph Wanderone. Since it seemed to be a losing battle, I
asked him why he was doing it. For once, he answered me
seriously. He said, "Pete, I've written a few good stories, but
I'm not William Faulkner. No one is going to remember my
stuff in a hundred years. But every school kid and every old
lady in America knows who Minnesota Fats is. He's mine. I
invented him. He's my little contribution to Americana, and
I don't want that taken away from me."

"My goodness," I thought then and think now, "how wonderful
to have given the rest of us Minnesota Fats or the Yellow
Brick Road or Kraft marshmallow miniatures. You don't
have to discover penicillin or win the Nobel Peace Prize or
write
Hamlet.
It is enough to have thought up banana fish or
invented a 'friend called Piggy.' "

(3) But that brings me to the third thing that I learned
from Tevis: something about myself. It was a very specific
thing tied to a very specific moment, a kind of revelation. We
were sitting as usual late at night in Tevis's little study, and I
was trying to sound glib and literary about my stories. Tevis
was trying to seem interested. He leaned forward from his
chair across the coffee table for the bottle of sauterne, lost his
balance, and allowed himself to slowly topple onto the floor
at my feet. I was horrified. He was unabashed. I sat primly,
knees together like the pastor's wife. He rolled onto his back
and looked at the ceiling. "Pete," he said, "I know that growing
up is hard, I really do, but growing old is awful." He didn't
stir, but after a while he said, "I like what you are doing, I really
do. I think you are sincere, and I think you are talented.
You haven't much to say, but you say it very well."

I suppose that ever since, I've been looking for something
to say. Along the way I've done a good bit of writing. Early
on I wrote a defiantly plotless novel, got a kind and encouraging
rejection letter from a young editor at Alfred Knopf,
and published some of its chapters as short stories. I wrote
a few other self-consciously literary short stories and even
won an award for one. But mostly what I've written has been
practical,
utilitarian stuff, stuff that speaks for itself. I wrote
textbooks, of course, and grant and award applications. I
wrote a glossy sixteen-page brochure promoting a $31 million
school-building referendum that passed by a mere 400
votes and for which I secretly took almost-complete credit.
Lots of other people took almost-complete credit, too, but the
thing did win some kind of national award; I have the plaque
in my classroom. And over the years I have done a good bit of
very subjective, highly personalized travel writing because I
became interested in what we do and where we go to give our
lives meaning when we don't or can't find it at home, when
life there becomes too staid and certain and we have to create
challenges—even dilemmas—for ourselves because problems
are interesting and important and life without them is
neither. It is the reason that people join the circus, I think,
drink too much, drive too fast, jump off things, jump into
things, climb things, run away from home, and paddle into
the wilderness. It is also the reason they tell stories.

N
OW, I NEED TO TELL YOU
about Lydia Greene. This is,
of course, my version of the story. There was a time
when I thought it was our version, that she would
have told you the same story, and up to a certain point in
time, she might have.

Lydia Greene worked at an ad agency with my old high
school friend Tom MacMillan, and after college I hung out
some with them and a bunch of other agency people. One
beery Friday night the three of us discovered that we were
all looking for apartments, and by the end of a very long evening
at some after-hours bar on the Near North Side feeling
confidential, even intimate, in that way that you only can
when you're drunk—I was able to see the other two only by
closing one eye—someone was saying, "Listen, guys, each of
us needs a bedroom, right?"

"Right."

"Right."

"But each of us doesn't need a living room, right?"

"Right."

"And we don't each need a kitchen or a bathroom,
right?"

"Right."

"Or dining rooms?"

"Right."

"So why rent twelve rooms when what we really need is
six? Let's go in together and get one of those great big three-bedroom
places with hardwood floors and high ceilings and
bay windows."

"I don't care."

"Whatever." There was a senior account executive at the
ad agency where Lydia worked who called her and the other
young art directors and copywriters "the whatever kids." He
did a very amusing, shoulder-shrugging impersonation of
their studied nonchalance and claimed that they had managed
to transform a relative pronoun into a "bon mot that
distilled four thousand years of Western cynicism and Eastern
mysticism into a single word of which virtually every
user is oblivious to origin, meaning, and implication."

So the three of us rented an apartment in Rogers Park, a
neighborhood that couldn't decide if it was going up or going
down, but was still close enough to the middle for our purposes.
Our hardwood floors had paint speckles, but the place
was big and airy with a little balcony and, if you stuck your
head out far enough, a lake view. The night we moved in was
another beery one, and this time Lydia and I discovered we
were both liberals, baseball fans, and movie buffs, and ended
up in the same bed. First thing she said in the morning was,
"That was a mistake." When I mumbled a protest, she said,
"Look, I need an apartment more than I need a boyfriend."
We didn't mention that night again for a long time.

Then after two years, Tom fell in love and moved in
with his girlfriend, and Lydia and I could neither afford the
place without him nor find a suitable replacement. Still, we
worked well together because we were both neat, quiet, and
independent.

"Want to find an inexpensive two-bedroom, then?" I
asked.

"Why not?"

Instead we found an expensive one-bedroom, but it was
very cool. It was on Lake Michigan, all windows and light
and French doors. There were only four rooms, but they were
huge.

"One of us could sleep on the pullout in the living room,"
she said.

"Not me."

"Not me."

"Well, we could get twin beds," I said.

"Rob and Laura. Ugh."

"Well," I said. We looked at each other. "I guess we could
sleep together."

We looked at each other some more. She shrugged.
"Whatever. We did once. It wasn't so bad."

So that was that. Why not? At first we pretended to be
roommates. Just roommates. But people would glance in our
bedroom and raise their eyebrows. So then we decided to be
lovers, but people would say, "Why isn't Lydia going with you
to the wedding? To your parents for Thanksgiving? To Ecuador?"
So finally we decided we were inventing an entirely
new, completely unique kind of relationship. Lydia liked that
idea a lot at the time. She had a kind of attitude, one that she
had gotten at Bennington or perhaps earlier, about the whole
falling-in-love-getting-married-and-growing-old-together
thing. She called it an "unfortunate sentimental narrative,"
and while I didn't think this attitude was quite as original as
she did, I accepted it and even adopted it sometimes. I did so
as a matter of personal convenience. In truth, I thought then
that there was something missing in her or me or between
the two of us, something that could be defined only by its
absence. At the same time, I suspected that that something
was missing in everyone and that tales of love and devotion
were either delusion or romance.

And, to be fair, there was a lot between Lydia and me. We
liked some of the same things: mystery novels, foreign movies,
hot food, cooking, Scrabble, Django Reinhardt, jigsaw
puzzles, and dogs (we eventually got a big black-and-white
pound dog named Art) in addition to baseball and later
Mexico. And I liked her. I liked living with her. So we gave
each other companionship, sex-when-it-suited-both-ourneeds-but-never-otherwise-mister,
respect, care, concern,
even affection up to a point, and freedom. Lots of freedom.

At first we could see other people, and we were free to
travel separately. In fact, we were free to go anywhere at any
time with anyone for any reason, no questions asked. Lydia
once disappeared for nearly a month, and only the fact that
she seemed to have taken some clothing kept me from calling
her parents or the police. When she finally showed up, she
looked three years older, and I never did find out where she
had been. We were definitely "don't ask, don't tell," and never,
never require, request, insist, or report. Even a question as
neutral and innocuous as "What time are you getting home
from work tonight?" was forbidden. At first.

Seeing other people worked just fine until I brought one
home.

"Where'd you pick
her
up?" Lydia asked the next day.

"Who?"

"That slut you were boffing in the living room last
night."

"What? Why would you ever say something like that?"
But we both knew, although neither of us could even quite
think the word: jealousy. How horribly ordinary. In time our
relationship became exclusive without either of us ever saying
so, and in the end it became conventional. That was unfortunate
because I would later realize that the main thing it
had had going for it was that it wasn't conventional.

"Do you know," Lydia said one day, "that in the eyes of the
state of Illinois, we are married?"

"Really?" I said.

"That's what someone told me. Common-law marriage.
If you cohabit for five years, you have a common-law
marriage."

"No kidding."

That was about the time we decided to go to Mexico to
live for a while, and it may even have been the reason, or one
of them. It's true that I was sick of corporate publishing and
wanted to try to write that novel I mentioned, and Lydia was
sick of the advertising business and wanted to try to paint,
and it's true that Mexico was a very inexpensive place to live,
but it's also true that Lydia and I were very much afraid of
being like everyone else.

"What happened to that story?" asks the dog-faced boy.

"What story?"

"You know, the one about the dead girl. The girl in the
car. Is it over?"

"Oh,
that
story. No, it's not over."

"But you keep going off on tangents," says the girl
whose hair is green this day. "Can't you just tell us what
happened?"

"I am."

"No, just to her. We don't want to hear about everything
you ever wrote in your whole life or some dumb town in
Mexico and all that crap."

"But that's all part of the story. The woman in the car is
just another part."

"Can't you just tell us that part?" asks Nick.

"Okay. Here comes some more."

Evanston Weekly Thursday, December 14

A Chicago woman was killed Friday evening in a one-car
crash on Sheridan Road in Wilmette. Lisa Kim, age 28,
was driving south near Gillson Park when her car left the
pavement and hit a lamppost. Kim was pronounced dead
on arrival at Evanston Hospital at 7:12 p.m. She was the
only passenger in the vehicle.

Kim of 1854 N. Wolcott was a native of Kenilworth
and a graduate of New Trier High School. She attended
Northwestern School of Drama and was an original cast
member of the musical review
Gangbusters.
She appeared
in several local productions and the films
After the Opera
and
Oops!
She also made radio and television commercials
and was employed at Trattoria Lemongello in Chicago.

Kim is survived by her parents, Dr. Roh Dae Kim and
Dr. Pae Pok Kim, and three sisters: Maud Nho of Glenview,
Sophie McCracken of Newport Beach, California,
and Tanya Kim of Evanston. Funeral arrangements are being
made with the Stanton Funeral Home in Kenilworth.

Attended Northwestern; didn't graduate. Original-cast member,
but didn't go with the show to New York. 1854 N. Wolcott.
Wicker Park or maybe Buck Town, certainly not Lincoln
Park. The trattoria; still waiting tables? Four girls. I'll bet she
was the second and the one in Glenview was the first. First-generation
parents, second-generation kids. The one in California
got away. Married a non-Korean. Doctor and doctor. I
wanted to guess they were both pediatricians.

Another person I encountered along the way besides Walter
Tevis who had something to say was one of my dermatologists,
although I had no idea what he meant when he said it
and have forgotten much of it since. Still, somehow I knew
it was important, and as if to prove to myself that the fourth
dimension is indeed time, I stuck some of it away somewhere
until I was ready for it.

I had more than one dermatologist because I had very
bad pimples. I don't remember where I found this doctor. I
don't even remember his name for sure; I think it was Lorenz,
but it may be been Lazaar. He seemed about seventy, had a
potato face, smiling eyes, a tuft or two of hair, an Eastern European
accent, and was Jewish, I think; his little office was at
Devon and California, then the heart of the Jewish community
in Chicago. I sat on the examining table and he on the
little stool. I talked earnestly about my pimples and everything
I'd tried with them, how they were interfering with my
social life, and how now my hair was beginning to fall out;
I probably went on and on. He responded by telling me this
story that I don't remember very well, that at the time seemed
a non sequitur. I don't think it was original. It had the sound
of a parable, and I might even be able to find it somewhere if
I looked, but I prefer my imperfect memory of it. It had to do
with a young man, a Candide-like figure, who faced a series
of travails in his life: illnesses, accidents, wars, catastrophes.
And with each my little dermatologist would pause, raise his
hands, and repeat the same refrain, which was something
like, "So, it either kills you or it doesn't kill you; and if it kills
you, you have nothing more to worry about, and if it doesn't,
you go on."

I remember afterward going into the pharmacy in the
building where a nervous, gaunt woman was trying to fill a
prescription, and the pharmacist was abrupt with her, sent
her away, looked over his glasses at me, and said, "Percodan
addict." I realized that for the second time in an hour and
perhaps for the first two times in my life, adults had taken me
into their confidence, if in very different ways. I remember
walking out into the hot sun full of feelings. Should I have
been insulted by the doctor's story? Yes, my little problems
had been dismissed, if gently, but somehow I felt flattered.
Why did I think that he didn't tell this story to everyone?
I was a little ashamed when I began to put two and two together:
Devon Avenue, his accent, his age. If he hadn't been
in a concentration camp himself, certainly he knew people
who had. And here was this whiny American kid seeking
medical attention because he wasn't getting laid enough. Or
maybe those thoughts came only later, came after the story
had settled deep into me somewhere, nested and fermented.
Maybe that day I was just insulted and a little pissed off that
he didn't understand just how tough it was to be pimple-faced
and balding at the age of twenty. Yes, that's how it was.
At any rate, I went on, but, of course, Lisa Kim did not, and
here are ten possible reasons why:

(1) She was genetically predisposed to risk taking.

(2) She was still practicing adolescent rebellion.

(3) She was always practicing second-generation rebellion.

(4) A guy with whom she was in love had broken her
heart recently.

(5) She'd had a late lunch with him that very day, and it
hadn't gone well. She'd had two glasses of white wine.

(6) Because she was hurt and angry and because of the
two glasses of afternoon wine, she'd gone to a Christmas
party she had no intention of attending with people she knew
better than to be around.

(7) One of them, a guy named Randy who was trying to
get into her pants, gave her a joint, hoping she would smoke
it with him. She didn't. She smoked it in the car on the way
back to see the man who had broken her heart one more
time.

(8) Two of the people at the party bought rounds of shooters
at the same time just as Lisa was leaving, and she drank
both shots straight down.

(9) None of the people at the party said, "Hey, Lisa, you
shouldn't be driving."

(10) I didn't open her door, reach across her, and take
her keys.

Now, obviously I was at the end of a rather long list, my involvement
being both very late and relatively incidental. Still,
had I stopped her, she would have gone on a while longer: an
hour, a day, a year, a lifetime. And just maybe someday she'd be
telling someone about that night, laughing in embarrassment.
"Jeez, I was so trashed, some absolute stranger pulled me over
and took my keys. Can you imagine? Man, was I lucky." Instead,
her life was over and my life was somehow different.