Drowning Lessons (13 page)

“DieHard.”

He had spoken out loud and drew looks. He said it again, laughing this time. They would think him a fool, or worse, a bum (his children wouldn't argue with them). A self-educated man, good with his hands, not so good with money. He'd done everything for himself, just hadn't done much of anything. He enjoyed being right, but it was like cooking meals no one would eat. The things that gave him satisfaction gave him little satisfaction. He sat there, over a third cup of coffee, staring out the window at the brown chaos of tumbling waters. His hands shook. They had been shaking for years, so hard he could scarcely turn a screwdriver. It was like having the
DT
S, except he didn't drink, never drank. A beer or two in the navy, and those had bloated him. He waved to the waitress. Fill me again, for I am bottomless.

… Lonesome? What is the definition of that word? Capable of
watching birds eternally? Friend of plants? Foe of neighbors? Born to tinker in solitude? I am a bitter man. No, I'm not; yes, I am …

Beyond the swollen rivers the hills were as raw as his thoughts. He reminded himself that for three years he had wanted to be with no one. If he sought companionship, he'd get a haircut, or stop by the butcher's for meat, or buy brake shoes for the Plymouth at Sweeny's. For a time he wrote letters to the local newspaper: why the town didn't need a public pool; why minimum wage was a lousy idea; why the government should get out of the education business (this letter copied to his bureaucrat stepson). For a while he toyed with objectivism, but quickly tired of the ardency of its practitioners, pants-wearing women and bald, beer-bellied men. Nasty letters he got after referring to their guru, Ayn Rand, as a “nut.” Opinions were like grass seed: the birds would eat most of them. If the world could live without his opinions, he could live without sharing them. Right?

List of friends yet remaining:

_________________________________

_________________________________

_________________________________

Well, no. There were the six to whom he sent letters. His dying first wife; his very-much-alive second wife; two stepchildren, who didn't much care for him and vice versa; and his own daughter, whom he considered a ditz. (She ran a puppet theater. Or it ran her. He could never be sure.)

Dear Sharon:

Well now at least you can cut loose these strings of mine, tangled up as they were in all kinds of things. I was never sure which of us was the puppet and which the puppeteer. Were you? …

The final letter was to Lansing, his dearest, oldest friend, former editor of the town newspaper, now surrendering to Alzheimer's in a nursing home. One true friend, dying.

He signaled the waitress again. She appeared with her magic orb. Questioned, nodded, poured. He thought: If only I could stop thinking. If I could just watch the rain, the rivers. He let his thoughts drain out into the floodwaters, joining several uprooted tree stumps and a vaudevillian duo of bobbing bald tires. See what God can make of a little rain? A muddy hell. He finished the fourth cup, then waited, tapping it again with the same quivering finger. The waitress saw him tapping but did not come over. He kept his eyes on her. She wore earrings shaped and painted like colorful birds. Parrots. He thought of his daughter, Sharon, and her moronically grinning puppets. Strings attached.

Oh, see the happy moron

he doesn't give a damn

I wish I were a moron

By God — I think I am!

Come here, silly twit. Bring your magic samovar. Refill my life, what's left of it. Make good your laminated promises. Here, you gum-popping ostrich, over here.

Vile, vile, vile, vile. The whole thing.

Go home. Kill yourself.

No. Sit there. Forever.

… Remember T. Roosevelt's dictum: “Do what you can, with what you've got, where you are, while you are there.” Or words to that effect …

One cup more. The last.

“Waitress? Some more coffee, if you dare, I mean, if you please.”

She came; she poured; she conquered.

She burst a pink bubble.

“Will that be all?”

From above her steaming Silex Grail, the young waitress looked down upon him. Before the diner changed owners, he had known its faces well. All were strangers to him now. Day by day the world grows stranger, colder. A furniture-truck driver sloshed in, shaking his rain-wet face, speaking of floods. The old man watched the trucker drip, then swallowed his remaining cupful in a gulp. Will that be all? It occurred to him that the question was a pertinent one. When the waitress spoke again, he answered her by tapping the side of his mug with a trembling finger.

“My cup is bottomless.”

“I've filled you five times already.”

“You haven't filled
me
once. But let's not quibble.”

He tapped the mug again. He didn't have to face the young girl to see her challenging look or hear the fireworks of bubble gum set off in her petulant jaw. He kept his eyes on the streaming plate glass, on the girders of the steel bridge. He had no desire to walk back in this rain. The house would wait; the Plymouth would wait. The keys were in the ignition. The battery was good. A DieHard. Lifetime guarantee. The cuffs of his trousers were still damp. He waited for his refill. And waited.

What's wrong with her?

She had gone on to serve other men. He gazed down the parade of sleepy work faces, some yet unshaven. Once his face had been among theirs. The garbage haulers, the hardware store man,
the pharmacist, the milk and the bread and the postmen. The factory workers. None knew him now.

“A bottomless cup,” he spoke loudly enough to be heard by all. “What do you suppose that means? In theory at least it means I can drink coffee forever.”

Newspapers rustled. No one seemed to pay attention.

He leaned and spoke to the
UPS
man next to him. “She won't fill my cup.” The man ate his eggs.

“Look, here's a tip, see? Worth at least another refill and putting up with an old putz like me.”

“Why don't you leave her alone?” said the fuel-oil man two stools down.

“Why don't you mind your own basement? Go clean a furnace.” Something else he'd done once or twice in his life. “I'm just sitting here, that's all.” His hands trembled at the lukewarm sides of his empty mug. “If I could just get a little more—”

“Pain in the butt,” said the fuel-oil man.

The
UPS
man paid and left.

“Waitress?”

The enigma appeared. She filled his cup.

“Bless you and keep you,” he told her.

“That's the last one,” she said.

“My cup is bottomless,” he reminded her.

“Is there a problem here, April?”

The griddle man had spoken, a man with broad shoulders and a thin voice.

“It's all right, Frank.”

“April. Is that your name? How appropriate.”

She edged down the counter.

It was your idea to proclaim your cups bottomless, not mine.
I'm only a customer, and the customer is always right. He sipped his coffee. “The thing is,” he spoke aloud now, “there are so few things you can count on in this life. You can't even trust your own bones. See this tooth? Chipped it on a chocolate-chip cookie. That tooth was with me sixty-eight years. Then came Chips Ahoy!” A body is a treacherous thing, he thought. Then aloud, “You think it belongs to you, but it's only on loan. Comes a day when you can no longer make the payments. The bank forecloses …”

A young man in a baseball cap took the stool vacated by the
UPS
driver.

“Their cups are bottomless,” the old man pointed out to him.

The griddle man faced him. Thick arms and red hair. He held a griddle scraper.

“This is my diner.”

A cook named McMurray

Got a raise in a hurry

From his Hindu employer

By favoring curry.

“Finish your coffee, then go.”

Consider the case of Mr. Suggs.

he was an eminent entomologist, which is to say

he knew nothing but bugs. …

The griddle man swiped his mug.

“I'm not through.”

“Out.”

The old man rose slowly, reached for his parka. “You shouldn't make promises you can't keep.” He said it quietly.

The griddle man went back to his griddle.

The old man got out his wallet. Then he thought of something. “I'd like to tell you a story.”

“April, call the cops,” said the griddle man.

“I'd just signed up for the navy. I was eighteen, green as moss, never been to New York.” His gaze was held captive by the window. “There were hundreds of us. In Greenpoint they marched us into this huge, long warehouse building by the shipyard. There were showers and bunks and lockers, and there was a latrine. It was like no other latrine in the world. Rather than a series of stalls, there was one long trough running the length of the place, a city block long and tilted so the stuff would, you know, flow down in one direction—” The waitress spoke into the phone. “ — into the East River. Anyway—”

“Would you shut up?” said the fuel-oil man.

“ — along this thing were these boards, one-by-fours, paired up to be sat upon. You'd hoist yourself up on them and good luck.” The waitress hung up. “When my turn came, I must have thought I was mounting a horse; I put a little too much
oomph
in it. Down I crashed, through the boards. And there I sat, at the bottom of this god-awful thing, up to my neck in piss and shit and laughing so hard I forgot to get myself the hell out of there.” He laughed just thinking about it. “Talk about up shit creek without a paddle! I haven't thought of it once since then …” He wiped a tear from his eye. “Funny.” He dropped some change on the counter. “Worst thing you could imagine, and I sat there laughing.”

He zipped up his parka and went out the door.

The rain fell harder; the waters roiled, rolled, and churned under the bridge with a relentless, masochistic zeal. More planks
of wood, tires, tree limbs, and stumps could be seen, along with what looked like a doghouse, bobbing briefly up and out of the torrent as if trying to be saved. He tasted the last sugary dregs of coffee in his mouth, working them around with his tongue, creating his own muddy pandemonium of fluids.

He started back up the hill, then changed his mind and walked to the center of the bridge. He stood at the railing, peering down at the churning mud, remembering. Here it was, for better or worse, flowing under his knees. He imagined a pair of planks, one-by-fours. Like a rodeo cowboy mounting a bronco, he'd hoist himself onto them. He'd straddle the brown flow of existence and ride it, bucking, until it threw him once and for all. Until it broke his back. Until he couldn't ride anymore.

He walked back up the hill.

I'D BEEN AWAY
over nine months, in the Pacific Northwest, doing nothing important, nothing you need to know about. When the winter rains began, after a long dry Indian summer, I hurried back home to B——, a small town near Hartford, Connecticut, to reunite myself with Claudette. Too late. I arrived in time to watch her unpack two bags full of groceries, none for me. Among other items, a box of Trix cereal and a deli container of something called ambrosia — made with miniature marshmallows and coconut flakes. I thought, Uh-oh. In the bathroom, Claudette had put away my toothbrush.

“You'll regret it,” I said.

Tears welled in her eyes as Claudette apologized. Oh but honey you were gone so long, etc. I took off in the middle of a sentence.

A sunny October day. The hills looked like … well, like bowls of Trix cereal. I was driving my little red sports car. Datsun 2000. A collector's item. Hard to get parts. A perfect-weather car. Normally, I drove it for fun only. But now I had a mission. The
convertible top (as always) was down. In the passenger seat next to me, splayed face down, the little spiral notebook in which I wrote everything. I drove way over the speed limit, with a lump in my throat and a streak of vengeance running from my heart to the gas pedal.

The first person I spoke to that afternoon was Gloria. I'd gone to my alma mater and lain down in the cool campus grass with my hands behind my head, looking up at the flaming tree branches flinging themselves over the central quad. Somehow I knew, if I just lay there like that, things would happen. Sure enough, I'd been lying there for less than a half hour, eyes closed, the sun hot on my cheeks and forehead, when a cool shadow covered my face. She stood over me, clutching a psychology text to her meager chest (Gloria was now a graduate student).

“I had a dream about you recently,” she said. Her first words — before I'd even opened my eyes. “In the dream you were vile, sickening, disgusting. You repulsed me.”

She said it with a sneer, gritting her teeth. Gloria had coffee-with-milk-colored skin, a so-called Roman nose. Though I'd never seen her smoke, the tips of her long fingers were stained with nicotine. I wasn't sure if I liked her, or even if I found her attractive. With some women it's hard to tell. She was a psychology major, a behaviorist, and we used to argue about her theories. Gloria believed that all investigation of human behavior should be based on objective criteria: hard science. I thought this idea bonkers. What about
feelings
? How do you measure those? What about all the things people think that don't appear to make any goddamn sense, the thousands of impulses that run through our minds every frigging second, like a swarm of gnats? How can you or anyone else begin to understand other people except through
the subjective lens of your own impulse-riddled conscience? Psychology can't be a pure science! That's absurd!