Carry Me Home (61 page)

On the 26th and 27th of August he was ill again, and again he decided against running the Dipsea.

Bobby thought constantly about Pennsylvania, about “home.” He followed Pewel’s recovery, which according to Linda Pisano was nothing short of miraculous for a man of 83, recovery moving from cast and bed to walker to canes. To Bobby his grandfather sounded old. Pewel complained about not being able to get to his barn office. Bobby researched, sketched, sent his grandfather a design for an elevator that could be built cheaply, that would operate on old electric motors that Bobby knew were stashed in a bin in the barn. Tony, he wrote, could build it in two or three days.

Olivia blew him off again, and he ranted about the promiscuous psycho-bitch from hell. Alone, in the cottage, he skimmed AP refugee and escapee reports of atrocities committed by communists in areas they’d taken during the Easter Offensive.

As refugees tell it, 40 civilians in Quang Ngai Province were locked in a building and blown up with dynamite because they were considered unsuitable for indoctrination.

In other cases, wives and children have watched their menfolk shot in batches of a dozen following “people’s trials.” ... Their crime: lack of enthusiasm for Hanoi’s brand of liberation.... Since the offensive began, authorities have reported confirmation of 2,558 civilian assassinations, 9,313 abductions ...

His ranting doubled but he did not know why.

“Another beer?” He and Al had played some one-on-one half-court under the lights, had worked up a good sweat.

“Yeah,” Bobby said. “I’ll get em.”

“Nah, I’m up. You’re really on a bummer, Man.”

“Yeah,” Bobby said. “You know, except for Josh, I’m ... I’m really fuckin lonely. I don’t want to live like this.”

“Um.” Al uncapped the long-neck bottles, handed one to Bobby. “What are you gonna do about it?”

“Finish that case a beer,” Bobby grumbled. “I’m a serious guy, Al. Ladies don’t like that. You know, all the time they want you to make em laugh. I’m not good at that. You ever try talkin to a woman about work? I don’t mean in the office.”

“Maybe you’re talking to the wrong ladies,” Al said.

“They’re all like that.” Bobby rose, stumbled.

“Jane’s not.”

“Staid Jane. Aw, she’d never look twice at me.”

“I think she likes you, Man.”

Shortly after Richard Nixon humiliated George McGovern at the polls, Bobby Wapinski began quietly dating Jane Boswell. Jane, like all the Great Homes Realty female agents, was pretty, yet with Jane it was more subtle. And for the first time in a long time Bobby experienced, recognized, saw the person he was dating, and not a projection of himself. They attended a personal-growth workshop. “For life to be better to you, you’ve got to be better.” “Set your goals. List the reasons why you want to reach those objectives.” “Become attractive and you will attract what you want.” “Attitude is ultimate. It makes the ultimate difference in the quality of life.”

Bobby was enthralled. Someone was revealing a format upon which he could hang various elements of his disgust. Jane too was excited. He told her about his rebound from Stacy, his marriage to Red. She told him about moving from England when she was thirteen, about feeling an outcast all through her teens because she had so few common reference points, about a brief marriage that ended in annulment.

They attended more seminars, arrived separately, left separately, met afterward at his cottage, talked long into the night, hugged, kissed, not lovers but loving. The only drawback, for Bobby, for Jane too, was the reaction of Al Bartecchi. He was Bobby’s friend, Jane’s friend. He’d even been the one who’d steered Bobby to her. Yet he’d become sullen, subtly exuding a sadness whenever he saw them.

On a night in early December, Jane said, “I love to touch and I love to be touched.”

“I do too,” Bobby answered. They had never been so close. He certainly, and he thought she, was thinking long term. “Sometimes I like to be alone.”

“Me too.”

“And someday I’d like to have a family.”

That drove a wedge between them, but it did not seem insurmountable. They continued to keep their relationship private. Al Bartecchi continued to suffer in silence until Bobby realized that Al must have come by to play hoops, must have seen Jane’s car.

“Hey Man, you comin up tonight?” Bobby.

“You got a group comin?” Al.

“Naw. Just a little one-on-one. I don’t want to go too hard. I’m going to run the Cataract New Year’s race. I don’t want to get hurt.”

That night they played but they played hardly at all. The court was slick with mist. “Al,” Bobby said when they went in, “I’ve got a dilemma. You know I’ve been dating Jane.”

“Yeah.” Al did all he could not to let his sadness show.

“And I like her. She’s a hell of a person.”

“Yeah. Seems to be.”

“But you know who I’d really like to be with”—Al looked quizzically at him, uttered nothing—“is Sharon.”

“Sharon!”

“Yeah. Is that stupid?”

Al suppressed a smile. “No. But she’s living with some guy.”

“I know, but I don’t think it’s very stable. I overheard her telling Olivia about some problems.”

“I don’t know, Bob.”

“Yeah, me either. But she’s so attractive. I think sometimes I go in just to see her smile.”

“Well, go for it, Man.”

“I’d feel better about trying if you’d—this is kind of hard to ask—if you’d maybe take Jane out. You know, we ... I feel like this obligation to her and if you guys went out that would break it.”

That night Bobby swore he saw Al float to his car. That night, with only Josh to talk to, he whimpered, alone. He made a try for Sharon. She was physically more beautiful than he’d ever realized, as if his eyes had just focused or adjusted to low light. She was more poised, too, more intelligent, more active, and her beliefs seemed more in line with his own. She wanted to have a family—not yet, but she loved kids. He developed a crush, spent hours thinking about her. He confessed to her his love. Sharon never led him on. “I’m a one-man woman,” she said to him, “and my man is a one-woman man.” He felt like a fool, but he couldn’t control himself. He’d found her. She was, to him, perfection. But she was unavailable, uninterested.

He attended more seminars. “In life, do all that you can; be all that you can; read, design, create, feel, earn all that you can. Keep testing the outer limits of your ability.... How would you be if you were the person you truly wished to be? What do you need to do to be that person?”

Create. Design. Build. Strengthen yourself, he told himself. Wapinski building blocks. What would Granpa do?

Still he sank lower.

And PEACE was NOT at hand. The negotiations in Paris had failed. Everything down the tubes. America resumed the bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong. The press labeled it the Christmas Bombings. He heard but he couldn’t pay attention.

Friday, 22 December 1972—“Oh, Bob, it’s very good to see you here.”

“Mr. Everest.”

“Dirk. Come on now. Hey, I want you to meet my wife. She doesn’t usually come to these Realtor parties, but I got her involved in this one by putting her in charge of the Christmas decorations.” Dirk Everest turned, looked for his wife. They were in the main dining room of the San Martin Golf and Country Club clubhouse. At least 150 people were in attendance. Bobby had come alone. He had been hoping that Sharon and her one-woman man would be there, had thought all day about what she’d look like in a formal gown or a party dress. He’d come standing tall, clean, in a new lightweight wool-blend suit. “Honey,” Dirk said, “this is Robert Wapinski, the man I tried to steal from Peter Wilcox. Bob, this is my wife.”

“Diana,” she said.

“My pleasure.” He bowed slightly, gulped. She was twenty years Dirk’s junior, appeared more like his daughter than his wife.

“Would you two excuse me a moment,” Dirk said. “I see Ernie Schnell over there. We’ve got something going and I’ve got to ask him ... you understand.”

Diana understood. Bobby didn’t but he willingly followed. She was attractive, perhaps a little heavy in the hips, perhaps too much makeup, too red lipstick, too black eyeliner but certainly lovely, and lovelier as she and Bobby danced, as they drank champagne cocktails through Santa-hat straws from white-bearded glasses, as she dragged him around to chat with others as if they, Diana and Bobby, were a couple. Later they spoke privately, sweetly, on the patio overlooking the eighteenth green. There she kissed him, lead him into the shadows where they kissed like adolescents. She pulled his head to her bosom, exposed her shoulders, her bra. He worked frantically to unfasten the front bra clip as she pushed her breasts into his face. He kissed that wonderful skin until suddenly she shuddered, stiffened, pulled back, covered herself. “Dirk’s watching,” she whispered indignantly. Then she strutted away.

At noon on the 23d Peter Wilcox called him, laughing, thinking the whole thing hilarious. “I heard Everest caught you in bed with his wife last night.”

“What?”

“What a foxy broad, huh? You’re pretty foxy yourself, you sly dog.”

“In bed? I wasn’t—”

“Yeah. Yeah. Dirk called himself. He was pretty upset.”

“Wait a minute. I wasn’t in bed with her.”

“That’s what Dirk said.”

“No way. We got smashed on those Santa Claus drinks. We kissed some. That’s all.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Peter cracked up. “He might be out gunnin for ya. But I’d risk that for a night shackin with Diana. Are those tits as nice as they look?”

“Damn it, I wasn’t ...”

By Christmas Eve Bobby had heard from Al and Dan, Tom, Jon Ross, Lisa Fonari and Liza Caldicott. He’d cuckolded Dirk Everest. Everest was steamed, Lisa told him, already had his attorney draw up divorce papers.

“Mr. Everest.”

“Yes. Who’s this?” The voice on the phone was terse.

“Robert Wapinski.”

“You’ve got one hell of a nerve—”

“I called to apologize. But I also want to set something straight. I wasn’t in bed with your wife. We didn’t do anything—”

“That’s bullshit. I saw what you two were doin with my own eyes.”

“Look. You’re right. We were out on the patio. It was way out of line. We kissed. Nothing more.”

“You’re amazing.”

“Really, Mr. Everest. I’m sorry. I’m really very sorry. I drank too much. But really, nothing happened.”

The phone was banged down.

Another guilt trip. Bobby hung his head, beat the heel of his hand into his forehead, moaned angrily, “Welcome to my comic strip.” Then he fell to his knees and repeated over and over, “Never again. Never again.” For five days he beat himself, physically, emotionally.

Again Bobby skipped a race that he’d prepared for. He hurt physically. He was sure he was going blind, knew he was dumb, knew his kidneys were failing, his heart valves leaking and his brain becoming mush. Night after night he sat in that isolated cottage, in the living room wrapped in a blanket, freezing in that warm house, keeping the interior lights low, the curtains drawn, staying away from the court, afraid Dirk would shoot him, perhaps shoot through the curtains at his silhouetted shadow.

An Agreement Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Viet Nam was signed today [27 Jan. ’73] in Paris by representatives of the United States, North and South Viet Nam, and the Viet Cong. The United States and South Viet Nam signed different versions of the peace agreement because of South Viet Nam’s intransient position and their unwillingness to recognize the Viet Cong’s Provisional Revolutionary Government.

Over. End of an Era. Last US Troops Leave Viet Nam
. Bobby clipped the articles, but read only the first few paragraphs, perhaps a cutline if it caught his eye.

Under a picture of Le Duc Tho, the North Viet Namese negotiator in Paris:

For the fifth time we have declared clearly that the DRV (Hanoi) and the PRG (Viet Cong) have never wished to force a Communist government on South Vietnam. We only want there to be in the South a National Reconciliation government supporting peace, independence, neutrality and democracy.

Over. Ended. He’d blown it. Aloneness became the anvil against which he attempted to hammer himself, to forge a new being. He began drawing at night. Small sketches on scraps of paper. He drew plans for a desk organizer, for a running-shoe rack, for closet and cabinet organizers, dish stackers, camping equipment holders. “‘This time I need more than just a friend,’” he sang quietly in his monotone honky-tonk, “‘I’m on my way to see you ah-gheen.’” He designed and began to work on an office-mobile—his old ’67 Chevy sedan. He brought it down to the edge of the basketball court, ripped out the seats making one large open compartment, carefully measured the interior. He drew orthographic and isometric sketches, labeled all dimensions. Then he overlaid tracing paper and sketched in a driver’s chair that could swivel to shelves along the passenger side, to a desk where the rear seat had been. He drew a collapsible desktop that, with the driver’s seat folded flat, became a six-six bed.

Late, very late, after the hit-man hour (when no hit man would think to come because all the lights would be out and there would be no shadows to fire at), Bobby walked. He walked without a flashlight because there was always enough ambient light—either from moon and stars on clear nights or from the reflection off the firmament of the mercury bulbs blazing at North Bay Mall on cloud-cloaked nights. He walked with Josh, quietly, slowly, following Old Mine Trail to the remnant of Cataract, past the very first sold and occupied cluster homes, through the construction site, more than a mile of ripped-up land with varying dark monsters: backhoes and cranes looking like brontosaurs bent, eating the earth; past row-house condominium frames looking like a forest seared by wildfire; past huge piles of white plastic drain pipe looking like the last burial ground of the mastodons, their ivory tusks collected and stacked for shipping, powdering, an aphrodisiac to humanity fucking the earth. Some nights he raged inside about inflation or crime or toxic dumping. A male agent from Golden Hills Realty had answered an up-call, had met this “client” at a vacant house, been robbed, beaten, shot in the head, and abandoned. One more downer. One more reason to say fuck it all.