Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me (27 page)

It’s always Pooh and me.

Whatever I do,
he
likes to do,

“So what are you doing tonight?” says Pooh:

“Well how very nice, ‘cos I am too . . . ”’

Yet to his cataclysmic surprise—when he had her ready and waiting, when he cautiously eased her knees apart with his own, when he hand-offered the sacrifice of his periscope’s blind eye, when she leaned nervously away and uttered a moan of exquisite surrender—to his cataclysmic surprise there was no membrane to stop him.

He was within her as easily as a plug in a socket and nothing had happened, nothing whatever. But they didn’t stop to discuss it and neither did they come together when they came. She was a full minute ahead.

As they were drinking Dairy Queen root beer floats in Fitzgore’s Impala she explained that it could only have been a Tampax accident. Gnossos said he didn’t understand; he was having trouble with the empty, drawing feeling in his loins. Well once, she told him, sipping, she had mistakenly used a second Tampax without removing the first. There had been this sudden, ugly pain. Probably when she’d applied force, since as she said she’d forgotten about the first one, well, there you were.

There who was, came the thought, but he tried laughing anyway, and believed her.

Now, a month and a day later, with the fume of lilacs in the outside air, he lay naked in David Grün’s blossoming greenhouse, his back on a bed of Irish moss, his hands locked behind his head. Kristin, not exactly naked, crouched with both of her delicate Cashmere Bouquet arms wrapped around his legs. She wore green-tinted nylons, a beige lace garter belt and mauve high heels because she’d learned what he liked. Now and again she pulled up some of the damp, glistening moss and scattered it over his belly. Gnossos, Immune, Exempt, partially transported, knowing next to nothing
beyond the sensation of her lips, the patient exhilarating warmth. Around them were heady soporific odors. Fig trees, poinsettia, wild tulips, windflowers, foxgloves, bearberries, pink carnations, sweet sultans, marsh mallows, fuchsias, candy tufts, tiger lilies, rhododendron, sweet williams, the pot of Pot, and a clay vase which once had held St.-John’s-worts. The foliage rustled with the motion of toads and snakes.

She chased him into the barn. The smell of horses, hay, and grain restored them. They tumbled on the oats, clothes flying, fingers searching. From the meadow beyond, they heard children’s laughter, shouts, yells, distant cries. Kiwi, Towhee, and Sparrow were home from school, prematurely building a maypole. Gnossos and Kristin sat facing each other, thighs straddling, bodies high, hands propped behind for balance. They made sounds belonging to no one language but common to all.

And again in the saddle of the sidehill, where he’d shattered the head of the galloping rabbit. Now he knew only Kristin. He watched her ecstatic expression, measured her rhythm, and ran out of protein. Drink chocolate milk, eat eggs, raw beef. Oh la.

“So,” asked David Grün in baggy pants, red-faced, hands covered with green paint. “When is the date? When do you fix the wedding?”

“June,” said Kristin.

“Traditional,” said Gnossos. He was whittling a mackerel for a mobile. Three other balsa fish, smaller, lay beside him on the floor, tiny screw eyes for dorsal fins.

Not so certain, Catbird shrugged. She was mixing small tins of black and electric-blue enamel for the mackerel. Tern and Bobwhite prepared brushes. Robin, the baby, growing stronger by the hour, crawled around the fluffy rug like a kitten, chasing something no one else could see. Kiwi and Towhee combed Kristin’s brown hair with translucent tortoise shell, picked out pieces of hay and oats. They tried braiding but it was too short. They wove a fantasy of colored bows instead, made curls with rubberbands, brushed and combed, then combed again, sculpting, building secret tunnels. “Enough,” said Catbird, in calico, “she’ll have no hair left. Come and help paint Gnossos’ fishes.”

He pared and whittled with David’s honed tools, chipped rough edges, planed the scaleless flanks, beveled the backs, shaped the obtuse angle of the tail, a graceful V. It was a time of building. Already they had made another music room by knocking through the kitchen into the old storage loft. They had salvaged ancient plans of the house and charted accordingly, locating beams, reinforcing supports, demolishing plaster, changing
familiar space. Now Grün had washed his hands with Lava and turpentine and was carrying a tray of coffee and Cordon Bleu, milk and cookies for the girls. “So,” he said. “Some nourishment finally. You enjoyed the day in the woods, Kristin, you saw the greenhouse? The pointsettias still come, it’s amazing. Some brandy in your coffee?”

Tern and Bobwhite, wary of the grown-up talk, left the room and became actresses, returning in feather boas, sequined gowns, high-button shoes, rouge, velvet hats, patent leather belts. “We have a trunk,” whispered David, to explain. “I’ll remember,” said Kristin, maternally. “Do,” from Gnossos, touching the back of her neck.

While they drank and watched the actresses dance, they prepared the wooden fish, painting black stripes on blue bodies, looping wire through screw eyes, bending sections of coathangers into suitable curves. When the mackerel balanced, Gnossos pinched the mobile between thumb and forefinger and climbed a stepladder to fix it to the ceiling. The smaller fish dipped and swung around the larger. Kristin only watched with a cigarette, sipping her coffee.

“Gnossos,” asked Sparrow, “can fishes fly?”

“Special ones,” he told her. “Some birds even swim.”

David, standing on a chair, tapped the largest mackerel on the tail. It spun around, paused, and returned. “To change media is not so hard,” he said. “Only dangerous.”

“Oh, Daddy,” from Sparrow, mock-teacherlike, “fishes don’t drown.”

“If they leave the water,” with a pregnant pause, “they drown.”

Not ready for parables Gnossos shook away the reference and hung the new piece of sculpture, using a large thumbtack. Along with the herons, to no one’s great surprise, it swam and flew. The children made sounds of gentle pleasure.

But in the lull of watching, as the moment was suspended, Catbird turned to Kristin and caught her putting out a cigarette.

“It’s government you study, isn’t it?”

Kristin, her arm extended, hand empty of the butt, off balance, answered, “Yes.”

“It’s all right for you?”

Glancing at Gnossos for support. “I guess so. I mean, I like it, is that what you’re asking?”

“She does very well, man.”

“Phi Beta Kappa,” David informed them, putting the stepladder in a closet, pronouncing the name with a surprising tincture of cynicism. “A Greek organization.”

Catbird moved the plate of macaroons and uncovered a dish of strudel, apples in a syrup of nuts and maple sugar. “Your father’s work is Washington, I think you said before?”

“He’s an advisor,” she said carefully. “To the President.”

Trying to ease the discomfort, Gnossos added, “Very conservative cat. Free enterprise for the privileged, and like that.” He was testing his brandy with a middle finger.

Catbird gave an intimate “Oh.”

“Well, he is,” said Kristin. “Militant, paranoiac, just about everything.”

“He thinks there’s a Negro-Jewish plot, man, to take over the republic.”

“He called last week to warn me.”

The actresses did pirouettes, the beauticians made a French roll. “Some more cognac?” asked David, finally sitting with them.

Kiwi was doing a headstand to get their attention. One of her button shoes had toppled off and her costume was upside down.

“He knows Gnossos, of course?” continuing slyly.

“O
God
, no. Even the name would give him some kind of attack. He’d probably itch to death.”

David’s eyebrows raised again, his body motionless for a second, his brow hinting at a frown. He poured a little more brandy into their cups, picking up a spoon to stir, saying nothing.

“Live near us,” said Tern, sitting cross-legged on the floor beside them, picking up the baby, Robin.

“Oh yes,” said Kiwi and Towhee, “live here, even.”

“So,” asked David finally. “What will you do?”

“Me, man?”

He nodded seriously.

“I don’t know. Research. Grants and stipends.”

“Awards,” said Kristin.

“So. You have a field of study?”

“Who knows? Little Consciousness Expansion. Not enough work being done on hallucinogens, for instance. And the mechanics of probability, man, they haven’t dented it yet.”

“No, I imagine they haven’t.”

“Some more strudel?” asked Catbird, touching her hair.

“Why, man? What’s the pitch?” talking to David.

“It gives a living, that? Hallucinations?”

“A what? I don’t follow.”

“His grades,” said Kristin. “They’re better than you’d think.”

“A living. Enough for a family to eat.”

“Man,
no
body makes a living. Are you serious?” He looked at the ceiling for effect but found his mobile instead. Robin began to cry. “It’s safe here, right?” he went on, “nice little microcosm.”

“Cozy and warm,” added Kristin, quoting. The baby wailed again and looked for her mother, who leaned over and took her. But she wouldn’t stop and Catbird had to take her out, muttering “Excuse me” through a forced smile.

Kiwi and Towhee ran behind to change costumes, Sparrow going with them. There was an uncomfortable silence, at the end of which Tern sighed, imitating an adult, and began gathering plates and cups. “Let me help,” said Kristin, and together they went to the kitchen, carrying trays. Gnossos tried offering a wink, but she failed to see it as she disappeared.

He was left alone with David. He stretched back on the fluffy rug and watched his mackerel dangling in the gentle convections of late-spring air. Absently he counted strings on the autoharps, dulcimers, banjos, and guitars. Cleanup sounds came from the kitchen, little-girl noises from upstairs. The sun was beginning to set, and only silence reached them through the open windows.

“What’s the old poop, David? You’ve been hinting.”

“Oh, we shouldn’t be too serious here, yes? Pedantic talk could alter my function.” Grün put his glasses on and talked over the rims. “This Immunity business. We worry how you mean to co-ordinate Marriage and Immunity.”

“Hey listen, it’s just the next thing for me to do, take it in stride, why don’t you?”

“Perhaps you could live together?”

“They’d throw us out, man, they’ve got rules and I want to stay. Don’t give me hurt looks either, I know it’s a little paradoxical, but nothing is ever simple.”

“But in such a place you choose to live? From five years old, except for summers, you’ve been in institutions. This is life? Here, in the microcosm, with what you know, you are a waste. Lost, but truly lost.”

“Exempt.”

“We share a dissipating current, Gnossos. Like transformer coils, you see, we mistake induction for generation. Vicarious sampling is all that remains; the sour evening game of the academies.”

“Man, I’ve been to where the legions go. They go to Las Vegas and I’ve been there. I watched it all happening one morning and, man, it was bigger than the fucking sun and I don’t want any part of it.”

“No. No, you’re talking about the bomb you saw and no, it was
not
bigger than the fucking sun. Believe me, it was most certainly
not
bigger than the fucking sun!”

Coming from David, the language surprised him. “In my head it was bigger.”

“So, the inside again, always the inside.” Grün eased his grip, looked around the room for something to identify with, and found the mobile still again. He pointed, shaking his finger. “To ease suffering, the method is easy. Simply weaken the bond with reality.” He put the finger down and swallowed the remaining brandy in his cup. “What is sin but an attack upon the third dimension?”

“Sin? What sin? What are you talking about all of a sudden?”

“It’s getting late,” murmured Catbird, strolling into the room with jackets. “We’d better get going, David.”

“Sin, man? Like guilt and expiation?”

“Or perhaps not,” he told him, rising with a heavy grunt, taking one of the jackets. “As the case may be.” He picked up the remaining tray and waved it in the air like a fan. The disturbance caused the wooden fish to clatter and collide.

When he left the room Catbird was still standing against the doorjamb, arms folded, staring at Gnossos. After a moment she added:

“How do you know? Perhaps we love you. Should we be silent?”

Two hours later, when the Grüns were gone off to their local Shakespeare reading with the farmers, and the girls were safely asleep under quilts, and the house was humming with its own breed of comforting silence, the lovers again lay naked. This time they had snuck into David and Catbird’s four-poster bed. The sheets had a faint scent of lavender and freshly cut grass.

But it was impossible for Gnossos to have an erection.

Instead, Kristin offered comfort.

Holding his woolly head against her pale breast, she read;

“‘Bump, bump, bump,

here comes Weary Bear . . . ’”

In the cobalt night he dreamed of disaster to come and cursed her sweetly into the sulfur cauldrons of hell. Intimations of imminent loss, the cruising monkey-demon biding time, ammoniac odors threatening doom. Sometimes
Grün’s idyllic landscapes, loamy hillsides sown with seeds of doubt; sometimes his Taos sleeping bag, surrounded by masked pachucos. Subconscious symptoms of festering disease in the core of a country’s opulent flesh. Come on, kids, be the first in your neighborhood to crash-dive in your own atomic submarine. Twenty-five cents and the top from your mother’s convertible. Wheee.

But always he woke in a sweat of mortal fear. One morning there came the usual gentle rapping at the door. The Mentor
Daily Sun
should have slid across the threshold, the rapping should have ceased, yet this time there was no mystery. He listened as the noise came again and still again. It seemed that the silent messenger of some months was about to make himself known. But Gnossos was only half surprised. The weeks before spring vacation were an anxious season, and even without portentous dreams, the mornings promised uncertainty and revelation. He mopped his body with a pillowcase and said, “Come on in, man.”