Wichita (9781609458904) (25 page)

The crosstown bus swoops into the stop. On the side-facing bench a man sits flanked by two young girls in barrettes and frilly dresses who have his large deep-set eyes. The younger girl gazes for so long and with such somber seriousness at Lewis that he finally meets her eyes, only to have her turn away with a fearful, affronted expression and whisper to her father who, as if used to this, listens but ignores her, or at least doesn't glance at Lewis.

The bus plunges into a still-lush Central Park, dark green ailanthus fronds waving in the slipstream of passing cars as if flagging them down. At Broadway, Lewis transfers to the uptown bus and at 116th Street, he gets off and waits next to the gates of the university.

Virgil is late. Lewis might try calling his office but finds himself hoping his father won't show up at all, that he's forgotten. A white cloud enters the blue sky from the south, the fibrous upper edges curling forward and undoing themselves swiftly, as in time-lapse, until it disappears behind the cornice of a building.

He watches the familiar security guards wearing Columbia-blue shirts, the exiting students and faculty, secretaries, administrators in dry-cleaned white dress shirts, blazers folded over one arm. It seems less like a monastic refuge than a management training facility.

Giving up on Virgil, Lewis is turning to walk away when he sees Andrew Feeling hailing a cab across Broadway. He's wearing a rumpled linen suit. V. is standing beside him in a summer dress, her long hair in a bun on top of her head. They are looking up Broadway but if they turned slightly they would spot Lewis. Then a cab arrives and Andrew opens the door for V., who gets in, followed by Andrew. The door closes, the cab drives off. Lewis watches its rear window, the vague outlines of the couple within, until it vanishes in traffic.

Virgil is hastening up the sidewalk in the constrained crouch he adopts when he runs in public. Lewis observes his arrival from a dazed distance, as if wounded and unable to move or speak.

“Office hours,” his father says, gasping for breath to underscore how hard he tried to be on time, which makes it less believable. “Ran late.” He is indebted to Lewis for this but Lewis is unable to savor it.

“Then I forgot the box and had to run back up and grab it. It's here now,” he assures Lewis, patting the side of his large stiff leather book bag with its quiver-like slots for pens and its odd salmony smell. “Shall we?”

Lewis falls into step beside him, listens as Virgil fills out the account of his lateness by complaining about an eccentric alum who haunts Virgil's Classics-department office hours: Clem. Lewis has met him many times over the years. He comes to Virgil's office hours to share the latest Latin terms he's invented for new phenomena like websites and iPhones. But Lewis is too rocked by the sighting of V. and Andrew to pay any but the barest attention. Virgil jerks him back from the path of a delivery bike.

They walk down the bulging hill that 116th Street becomes, a gust of autumnal air flushing through the chute formed by the apartment buildings of Claremont Avenue—V's street. He'd expected crossing it would be the hard part, not actually seeing V. herself, much less in Andrew Feeling's company.

In Riverside Park the land continues the fall downhill in the deep shade of old trees. They descend a wide terraced walkway divided by an iron banister and stop at the fence. A star-like sweetgum leaf is caught in the mesh.

Virgil squints distrustfully at the view. Cars flash past on the Henry Hudson Parkway, visible through the trees. Beyond the highway are a bike path and the Hudson, aglitter in the late-afternoon sun. But the highway is surrounded by a high fence and guardrails.

“That's strange,” Virgil says. “I distinctly remember there being a way across to that bike path by the river.”

Lewis sighs and is going to suggest scattering the ashes here in the park but Virgil sets off down another terraced walkway, which leads to the main path, wide yet crowded with dog-walkers, joggers, bikers.

After walking uncertainly uptown for a while, Virgil stops to ask the way from a gray-haired man who looks deranged to Lewis. There's a tunnel where you can cross under the highway, the man tells them. It's downtown further, at 104th St. But when Virgil stands peering in that direction, the man seems to take this as a doubt cast on the reliability of his word and rises from the bench to shoo them on with an aluminum cane.

Walking quickly away, with Virgil glancing back a few times, they pass soccer fields and a basketball court, a skate park with blue ramps and half-pipes, and finally enter a curving passage that leads to the bike path and the Hudson.

A red helicopter flies downriver, its tail tipped upward; an empty garbage scow heads upriver. There's the whoosh of rush-hour traffic on the Parkway, the clank of a wire halyard against the mast of a sailboat anchored not far from shore, the treacherous near-silent bikers flashing past just behind, dog-walkers.

Into the gray weathered wood of the railing, which comes to an end where they stand, someone has hacked “Dully.”

“We can go down right there,” Virgil says conspiratorially, pointing to the mica-flecked boulders where wavelets are cresting and slapping the shore. It's against the law, what they're about to do. Which Seth would love, but still. Virgil has unlatched his book bag and removed the hexagonal cardboard box. A woman wearing a self-satisfied smile slices past going very fast on a ten-speed. Then, for the moment, there's no one around, only figures on foot silhouetted against the sun to the south a few blocks away.

“Now's our chance,” Virgil says and clambers cautiously down over the large dry boulders, followed by Lewis.

“After you,” his father says, handing him the box. Lewis removes the lid and reaches inside and takes out a handful of ash. He watches it strike the tea-colored water and vanish. He gives the box to Virgil, who shakes out the remainder with broad, upward motions, allowing the wind to do the work of dispersal, which seems to Lewis a form of cheating or laziness.

“
Sic mors, quod non potuit vita dare, dabit
,” Virgil intones quickly.

“Thus death,” Lewis begins, feeling like he's been given a pop quiz. “What could . . . ” He looks at Virgil for help with the rest. “ . . . something.”

“'Thus death shall give what life could not,'” Virgil translates. “Thomas More,” he adds, glancing back with a double-take. Lewis follows his gaze.

A cop is dismounting from a mountain bike—waspish helmet, black spandex, thick brown limbs.

“Shit,” Virgil mutters. She pulls a thick notebook from a satchel and beckons to them with a crooked finger. They make their way back up the rocks to the bike path, Virgil going first. In his agitated haste, he slips and catches himself awkwardly, wincing in pain as he straightens as if he might have injured his back.

“It's illegal to scatter ashes in public water ways, sir,” the cop tells Virgil, beginning to write up the ticket. She has a blunt, no-nonsense face, short dark hair, a dark tan.

Virgil bends over the cop, the ticket, his arms tightly crossed. “That was my
son
,” he says in a low voice. Lewis is shocked by the melodrama of the words and the tone.

“I'm sorry for your loss, sir,” she says briskly, without looking up. Bikers and dog-walkers slow down to rubberneck. What crime did they commit, this pair? Lewis hears them wondering. Sex in public? Right out here on the dog walk?

“He was only
twenty
,” Virgil says and there are tears in his voice and then, peering at him, Lewis sees there are tears on his face. He can't tell whether it's for the cop's benefit, as a kind of ruse to get out of the ticket, or some late-arriving grief. Or both. The cop scratches away with her ballpoint.

Virgil sighs raggedly and gazes piteously down at the half-written summons. “It was a
suicide
, officer,” he says.

The cop stops writing and looks at Virgil under her brow, at the tears on his cheeks. She's hesitating now but she also seems to be assessing the veracity of the emotion.

She flips shut the ticket book. “Fine,” she says with a hint of disgust. “I'm letting you off with a warning.” She remounts the bike.
But don't let me catch you scattering ashes down here again
hangs unsaid in the air.

“Thank you,” Virgil says quietly as she pedals away. Lewis half expects him to brush away the tears and smile in sly triumph. But when the cop is gone down the path, he stands there in a defenseless posture, head bowed, weeping.

Finally Lewis puts an arm around his shoulder and, walking slowly, attracting the occasional concerned or prurient look, they make their way to the bus stop at 104th St.

Virgil insists on waiting until a bus arrives. They stand looking up Broadway in silence.

 

In Brooklyn, the streets shine from rain that fell while he was underground. Acacia blossoms lie in sodden drifts on the windshields of parked cars like snow. Night has fallen and there's no one else in sight, just row after row of mute brownstones. Stickups are commonplace here and Lewis walks quickly and warily but after a block his stride relaxes into an easy lope and he has a pleasant, feral feeling of being swift and light and untouchable. Tumbling along the ground in the wind, a black plastic bag keeps pace with him for nearly a block, stopping only when it meets a high iron fence and even then almost squeezing through the bars.

Sculpture in the Expanded Field.

 

 

My deep gratitude to the following people and institutions: Ryan D. Harbage for his tenacious belief in book and author, Alice Sebold for her writerly edit and Ann Patty for providing revisionary keys; Michael Reynolds, Julia Haav, and Simona Olivito at Europa; Caveh Zahedi, Amanda Field, Adam Yaffe, Rachel Shteir, Nico Israel, and J. Anderson, who took the time to read and react; the John S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Pratt Institute, specifically, Peter Barna, Toni Oliviero and Ira Livingston. Above all am I indebted to my wife, Juliana Ellman, muse and first responder, without whom it's all inconceivable.

 

 

Thad Ziolkowski is the author of
Our Son the Arson
, a collection of poems, and a memoir,
On a Wave
, which was a finalist for the PEN/Martha Albrand Award in 2003. In 2008, he was awarded a fellowship from the John S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. His essays and reviews have appeared in
The New York Times, Slate, Bookforum, Artforum, Travel & Leisure
and
Index
. He directs the Writing Program at Pratt Institute.
Wichita
is his first novel.