The Interestings (39 page)

•   •   •

I
t did not seem so strange, three weeks later, for Jonah Bay to find himself selling dyed pink and blue flowers out of a plastic bucket on a street corner in nearby Brattleboro, Vermont. Or if it did feel strange, he was defiant in the face of strangeness, and besides, he liked Lisa, the girl he sold flowers with, though “selling” wasn’t the right word, because no one was buying. The people they approached regarded them with annoyance or open hostility. Here, as at earlier points in his life, Jonah felt he knew what he was doing, but he seemed to be watching it all in third person, neither approving nor disapproving, and unable to affect the outcome.

Naturally, his mother was hysterical about his change of plans. He had gone back to Cambridge in the minibus with Hannah and Joel and Cap’n Crunch, in order to pack up his summer dorm room, and from there they had driven down to New York to drop off his worldly belongings, which he would no longer need on the communal farm. All he would need was a pillow, a blanket, and some clothes. In the loft on Watts Street, his mother angrily said she thought he had more of an independent mind than to join what she called “a common cult.” She had one of her musician friends with her that day for moral support, and they both tried to argue with Hannah and Joel, who were expert at not engaging with irate parents. The more Susannah Bay became upset, the more calmly Hannah and Joel talked. At one point, Hannah said to Susannah, “I have to tell you, we may come to this from different angles, but I really admire your music.” When Jonah had casually mentioned to them who his mother was, Hannah had said she really wanted to meet Susannah, which he suspected was part of the reason for the return to the loft.

“Oh,” Susannah said, a little surprised. “Well, thank you.”

“I grew up listening to your songs, Ms. Bay,” said Hannah. “I’ve bought every record you’ve ever made.”

“Even the disco folk one?” Jonah asked, unnecessarily cruel.

His mother quickly said, “That was a mistake, that record. And this, Jonah, this is a mistake too. We all do things we later regret. Come on, you just got a degree from MIT. You’re such a bright person, and you can do anything you want, yet you’re choosing to live on a farm with people you barely know who follow the teachings of a Korean man who says he’s the Messiah?”

“Yes, that about sums it up,” said Jonah, and he grabbed his old blanket and pillow and slung them over his shoulder. He both knew and did not know that what he was choosing to do was radical. He felt grateful to have decisions taken away from him for once, and to know that he would not be overcome with feeling in ways that were always hard for him to manage. He and his new friends and their black dog sauntered out of the loft and got back into the minibus with the shot springs, and headed back to Vermont, reaching the farm by sundown, in time for prayers.

Within three months Jonah had been so absorbed in life there and in the teachings of the church, as conveyed to him by some of the other residents of the farm, that it was as if he had been triple-dipped in a bath of ideology. His mother remained distraught and contacted a few of Jonah’s friends, essentially saying, “Do something.” So in the fall, in consultation with Susannah Bay, Ash and Ethan quietly arranged for a deprogramming of Jonah that would take place in a midtown hotel room in New York City. Ash’s father “knew someone”—of course he did, he knew all kinds of people. The guy had been recommended by a colleague of Gil’s at Drexel, whose daughter Mary Ann became a Hare Krishna, shaved her head, and changed her name to Bhakti, which meant “devotion.” It was set, and Susannah agreed to pay the shockingly high fee.

What they needed to do first was get Jonah away from the farm; that part was apparently often harder than the deprogramming itself. Ethan, Ash, and Jules drove Susannah up to Vermont to see Jonah and have a look around, and then, the following day, to somehow find a way to get him home. The four of them stayed for dinner and spent the night on the farm. Unlike Jonah when he first went there, none of them were interested in learning more about what they’d seen and heard at dinner and in the barn. All they wanted was to take him out of there. “Listen, Jonah,” Ethan said the next morning after breakfast. “I did a little reading before we came up here. I went to the New York Public Library and I asked them for everything on microfiche that I could find. In my opinion, Moon is a megalomaniac.”

“No, Ethan, that’s not true. He’s my spiritual father.”

“He isn’t,” Ethan said.

“I seem to remember something about
your
father,” said Jonah, using the only retort he could think of, “and your mother, and your pediatrician.”

“Well, at least you remember the conversations we used to have,” said Jules. “That’s good. It’s a start.”

“Apparently Moon’s followers give up their individuality and creativity, which is something we’ve all valued above everything else,” said Ethan. “If the Wunderlichs taught us anything, it was that. Is it that you’re afraid? Is it because it was hard for you to come out as a gay man? No one cares if you’re gay, Jonah; I mean, big deal! Don’t give that up; don’t take it back. Be yourself, fall in love, have sex with guys, do all the things that make you you. Don’t be guided by some rigid external philosophy.
Make
things. Play your guitar. Build robots. This is all we’ve really got, isn’t it? What else is there but basically building things until the day we die? Come on, Jonah, don’t fall in line. I just can’t understand this; why are you even here?”

“I’ve found my place finally,” Jonah murmured, and then someone called him to tend the hydroponic lettuces. “I’ve got to go,” he said. “And you should all hit the road. You don’t want to run into traffic heading back. Where’s my mother? Someone should tell her it’s time.”

“You’re under the
influence,
Jonah,” said Ash. “Please don’t say that this is the sum total of who you are.” She came close and took him by both wrists. “Remember when we were involved?” she asked shyly. Then she whispered, “I know it never became anything big. But it was an unspoiled, delicate thing, and I’m glad it happened. You were the most beautiful boy I’d ever seen in my life. I don’t know what happened to make you so vulnerable to this kind of thing. You should be an artist, Jonah.”

“I’m not an artist,” Jonah said flatly. “That didn’t happen.”

“You don’t have to be one,” Jules suddenly put in. “You can be whatever you want. It just doesn’t matter.”

Jonah looked around at all of them. “I needed something, okay?” he said. “I didn’t even know I did, but I did. Ash, you and Ethan have each other. Me, I’m totally on my own.” He was almost in tears as he spoke, confessing his isolation to his oldest friends. “Maybe I needed a deep love that was more powerful than any other kind. Didn’t any of you ever feel you needed that?” he asked them, but he had turned his head now and was looking right at Jules. She was the other unattached one here, the one who seemed to be quietly waiting, standing in the river of her life, the way Jonah had been. Jules looked down at the ground, as if it hurt her to make eye contact with him.

“Sure, sometimes,” Jules said, and it was the strangest thing, but Ethan was now looking at Jules too; he and Jonah were both regarding Jules Jacobson attentively. Ethan, looking at Jules, seemed to have fixed himself upon her the way people fixed themselves upon the Messiah. Jonah could almost see the ragged edges of light that Ethan certainly saw around her—the coronal fringe light that was sometimes created by diligent, applied love.

Ethan loves her, Jonah thought. This was an epiphany, one of many that he’d experienced on the farm. Ethan Figman loves Jules Jacobson even now that he’s bound his life to Ash Wolf, even now that so many years have passed since that first summer. He still loves her, and because I am now a devotee of the Messiah, I can see such powerful and radiant light.

“You love her,” Jonah said to Ethan indiscreetly. He’d seen it, and he felt he had to say it.

“Who, you mean Jules? Yes, of course,” Ethan said in a curt voice. “She’s my old friend.” Everyone looked in all sorts of directions, trying to sever the moment from the meaning that Jonah was giving it. Ethan walked back over to Jonah now and put an arm around his shoulder. “Listen,” he said, “if you let us, we’ll get you some help.”

“What kind of help do you think I need?”

By now, a few residents of the farm had begun paying attention to the agitated scene between Jonah and his visitors. Hannah and Joel came over to intervene, and Tommy hummed up in the wheelchair, his baseball cap backward on his head. “Is there something distressing going on here?” asked Hannah. “Some conflict?”

“No, we’re just talking,” said Ethan.

“Jonah was asked to tend the hydroponic lettuces,” Joel said.

“Seriously, you can go fuck the hydroponic lettuces, Joel,” Ethan said. “I mean, really, are you going to compare the need for lettuces to be tended with the need for this person, this great friend of ours, to have an actual life out there in the world? Doesn’t everyone deserve a chance to live in the world, instead of hiding away on a farm, selling dyed flowers that no one wants, and that everyone
runs away from
when they see the dyed-flower bucket coming their way? What is it with you guys and selling flowers? The Hare Krishnas do it too. What, did everyone see
My Fair Lady
and think, ooh, that looks like a good idea?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Tommy. “But you’re being disrespectful, and it’s time for you to go.” He pressed a button and reared slightly backward in his chair.

Then Susannah Bay, who’d been giving a guitar lesson in the barn to two young women, suddenly appeared with her guitar. “We’re ready to take a little trip to town, Susannah,” Ethan said, his face full of meaning, trying to tell her,
we have to move now.
To Jonah he said, “I tell you what. Let’s go for a ride. You can show us around the town. Your mom will come too.”

“Oh,” said one of the wide-eyed young women who accompanied her, “Susannah was teaching us ‘Boy Wandering.’ The chords are actually easy. It’s mostly A minor, D minor, E.”

“And she showed us the open D tuning for ‘The Wind Will Carry Us,’” said the other woman.

For someone who had been so upset since her son had moved to the farm, Susannah Bay now appeared calmer, as if what she’d seen here wasn’t nearly as dire as she’d imagined. She’d had a tour of the gardens and the crops and the sheep in the meadow. She’d given an impromptu guitar lesson to people who still knew who she was and still cared about her music. Time stood still here on this commune in Dovecote. Everyone dressed as if they were at a three-day music festival; no one owned more than a few material possessions. The income they’d earned in the past, or that they marginally earned now, went to the church. Susannah Bay found herself and her work
cherished
here. It had been a surprise, and now she was going to have to give it up?

“We’ve been talking to Susannah,” said the first young woman, “and we’ve asked her a favor.”

“What?” said Ash. “What could you possibly want from Jonah’s mother?”

“Reverend Moon is holding a spiritual gathering this winter in New York City, in Madison Square Garden,” said the woman in a casual, confident voice. “We all just love ‘The Wind Will Carry Us,’ and we wondered if we could possibly get our chorale—a chorus of five hundred of the best voices from around the world—to sing it at that event. With different lyrics, slightly.”

“Different lyrics?” said Jonah. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I’m not a musician myself,” said the woman, “but I was thinking it could be something like, ‘The Reverend Moon will carry us / Carry us . . . apart.’”

They were all silent, horrified. “Oh yes,” said Ethan finally, in a voice thick with irony and condescension. “That’s exactly what he’ll do. Carry everyone
apart.
” He and Jules looked at each other and smiled slightly.

“Pardon?” said one of the women.

“Nothing. Look,” said Ethan, “obviously Susannah Bay is not going to allow her lyrics to be messed with. It’s not negotiable.”

But Jonah’s mother appeared contemplative. Was she faking them all out? It was impossible to tell. After a moment she quietly said, “I’d consider it.”

One of the women asked if Susannah would also consider staying on the farm for a few more days to work on the song with them, and on guitar and vocal technique in general. It wasn’t as if she had any pressing engagements, right? To everyone’s bewilderment Susannah agreed that she would stay here until Wednesday, when someone would drive her to Brattleboro to take the bus home. But Jonah, Ash insisted, should come for a ride into town now. If they’d told him they were taking him back to the city, surely he would have bolted. Jonah, Susannah, and a few key residents of the farm walked away to discuss the situation in private.

“I really don’t like the idea of this,” Ethan whispered to Ash and Jules as they stood watching the group of people talk among themselves. “It feels like a hostage exchange.”

“They said it’s just for a few days,” said Ash. “Apparently Jonah’s mom is into the idea of working with them, maybe even letting them use her song, though I honestly have no idea why. It seems like a terrible mistake to me.”

“I think she’s just so grateful that someone’s thinking about her music again,” said Ethan. “It’s one thing to have a voice like hers, but if nobody appreciates it anymore, then it’s depressing. This is probably giving her a big lift. But this way, at least we get Jonah to come with us. We’ll deal with his mother later.”

It occurred to Jonah during all the confusing, complicated negotiations—Why did they want him to go into town with them so badly? Why were they even
here
, exactly?—that he’d never wanted to run away from home, but instead he’d wanted to have
his
home, in the person of his mother, run after him. Here she was now, and he was within reach, but she was wavering. He didn’t really mind it, though. She was appreciated here, the way she’d been appreciated in the past, but now in a much smaller and more concentrated form. She was making a decision to go where the audience was.