Honeymooners A Cautionary Tale (13 page)

Lindsay’s father had walked
her onto the train that early morning she had first departed for
Vassar, put up her carry-on luggage, and at the last moment had
hugged her goodbye, the first time Lindsay could remember him
hugging her since childhood. Lindsay’s father had then told her
out of the blue that if she slept with a boy he would know it. That
night, somewhere in the darkness, hours east of her father, Lindsay
had worked up enough nerve to go out and smoke on the open platform
between cars like an adult, the first time she had smoked like
that, a real grownup puffing in public. The vague sweep of the
Western landscape felt so distant and dark, and Lindsay imagined
herself a mysterious, daring woman in a veiled hat smuggling her
life east. Lindsay’s cigarette smoke trailed that train moving away
from her father, like a ghost too thin to haunt.

Lindsay’s acned face had
rubbed raw against the train seat as she stared at endless, oily
horizons, or tried to sleep, and by the time her train pulled into
Poughkeepsie days later, her face was a bloody mess. Lindsay’s
roommate in Davidson Hall was tall, thin, blond, and as beautiful
as the pale girls whose pictures Lindsay stared at in Vogue
magazine. Lindsay’s beautiful roommate wore a pastel-print McMillan
blouse, a wraparound skirt, loafers, and a clunky bracelet of gold
charms depicting crowning achievements in her life. As she felt her
beautiful roommate giving her the once-over, Lindsay had tried to
smooth her straight, bright-red, corduroy skirt over her bulging
hips.

As the months passed,
Lindsay would sit for hours at her darkened window overlooking
Davidson Hall’s front door and watch the endless moonlight French
kissing of girls and the boys who loved them with all their
hearts.

Rolf was Lindsay’s first
true love. A dark, handsome, German boy, he was a Yale student
Lindsay had hired her freshman year to tutor her in German. Soon
she dreamed of doing anything Rolf asked of her. She dreamed of his
hands on her breasts, her nipples rolled gently between a thumb and
forefinger while being licked like her one and only high-school
boyfriend used to do, that pimply, big-hipped boy who was the
marching band’s drum major and always stuttered when aroused. One
spring Saturday afternoon when Rolf came to campus to tutor
Lindsay, he caught sight of Lindsay’s beautiful roommate and fell
head over heels in love with that blond vision. The beautiful
roommate took a fancy to Rolf; such a dark, intense, handsome boy,
he amused her. One weekend the roommate announced to Lindsay she
planned on shacking up with Rolf in an apartment he had borrowed
near the Yale campus. She was curious to see if he was as full of
fire as he appeared. The beautiful roommate modeled her new blue
nylon nightgown for Lindsay. The beautiful roommate danced a slow
bump and grind about the room while Lindsay stared through that
soft, flowing film at erect nipples red as blood. A few weeks later
the beautiful roommate swore Lindsay to secrecy, then announced
that their old friend Rolfie boy was full of fire all right, for
she was knocked up.

What was Rolf to do? A
scholarship exchange student, he had little money, but Rolf did the
honorable thing, just as Lindsay had expected him to do. He begged
the beautiful roommate to marry him. They could quit school, find
jobs of some sort, manage somehow to make a future for themselves
and for their son. When the beautiful roommate told Rolf she might
abort, he begged her to bear his baby for the sake of the future,
if nothing else. The beautiful roommate quit taking Rolf’s calls.
She began leaving campus early on Fridays for weekends in New York
with other boys. Rolf began coming to campus during the week,
lurking about, following the beautiful roommate around between
classes, begging, begging her. She threatened to tell authorities.
Lindsay would sit in her darkened window and watch Rolf pace below,
smoking. He was growing so thin. Even Lindsay was losing weight
with worry. Why wasn’t she the one knocked up? It should have been
her knocked up. She would carry Rolf’s child, his son, his baby
boy, under her heart gladly. Even if Rolf didn’t love her at first.
Rolf would learn to love her.

Perhaps Lindsay could talk
the beautiful roommate out of the abortion! Perhaps if she offered
to take the baby herself! Even if Rolf would not want the baby that
way, without the beautiful roommate in the bargain, Lindsay didn’t
care. She would adopt the little baby as her very own, give it some
beautiful name. Lindsay hated Vassar. She would leave Vassar in a
heartbeat, get a job, disappear somewhere nobody would dream to
look, Hoboken, say, and hide out there until her boy was a fully
grown man.

Lindsay sat at her darkened
window and imagined a brand-new love story. It was full of rescue
and escape, and it had a happy ending. She would somehow rescue her
baby boy and escape with him into a lifetime full of love, beyond
worry, free from regret and guilt. Lindsay imagined the features of
her son’s handsome face, its shape, his lean, perfect, maturing
body, his tender feelings and thoughts for her, his love for her,
the words he would come to speak to her full of gratitude. One
night, as Lindsay gazed out her window, a beautiful, dreaming baby
appeared before her. It floated in midair, luminous among the dark
leaves of the trees. Lindsay realized that dreaming baby’s life was
her mission on earth.

2

The night the beautiful
roommate told Rolf the whole thing had been a dumb hoax, that she
had never really been knocked up at all, that it was simply a dumb,
bad joke (even she had to admit that!) which had gone too far, Rolf
beat his fists bloody against Davidson Hall’s front door and ran
off into the dark. Lindsay went searching for him. Hours later she
found him in a Poughkeepsie bar drunk. While Rolf wept quietly,
Lindsay downed three Brandy Alexanders and two Pink Squirrels to
catch up. Lindsay got drunk as quickly as she could, and she
mourned along with Rolf for the loss of their son. A hoax, Rolf
cried, and looked up at Lindsay through his tears. A detestable
lie! Why would she tell a story like that? Somebody that
beautiful.

That night would be like no
other for Lindsay, full of events so new she would alternately
attempt to reimagine or forget them all the rest of her life. In a
drunken delirium Lindsay and her beautiful German boy circled back
to a campus transformed in moonlight, whose old stone, ivy-covered
buildings loomed lovely to Lindsay for the very first time. They
found themselves lost on some dark path in the heart of Shakespeare
Gardens, a park on campus containing every plant mentioned anywhere
in Shakespeare’s poems or plays. Rolf stumbled off the path. He
pulled Lindsay down beside him, into a secret chamber beneath an
oak.

That night the air of
Shakespeare Gardens was like spice, thick with things nearly
forgotten, faint melodies, lights in the leaves, a flickering
lantern of moonlight over Rolf’s dark, handsome face. If Rolf fell
asleep, Lindsay would cross his lids with love’s oil, and he would
wake charmed with her in his mind. She would pluck the wings of
butterflies, and she would fan moonbeams into his dark eyes. Hiding
in this palace wood, she would carry his changeling under her
heart. She would. She would. She would run away with Rolf.
Anywhere. Hoboken. Germany. Marry him in a heartbeat, take his name
as her own. Would she be worthy?

Rolf unbuttoned Lindsay’s
blouse, lifted her bra. Rolf took Lindsay’s left breast in his
hand, kneaded it a bit, rolled her nipple between his thumb and
fingers just the way she had hoped he would, but then he suddenly
just squeezed her nipple as though it were a zit. Ouch, Lindsay
said, jerking back and banging her head against the oak. I beg your
pardon, Rolf said. He unzipped his pants and pulled out his penis,
which, even through the gloom, Lindsay could see was limp as a
worm.

Look what she did to me,
Rolf said, wagging his limp member for emphasis. —This tragedy is
all her work. Touch it, Rolf said, and wagged it again. —Please
touch it. Help me. Please help me.

Sure, Rolf, Lindsay said,
and took Rolf’s limp penis in her hand. It sure didn’t feel like
any of the other three members she had held before.

That awful blond bitch, Rolf
said. —I am a ruin now. Now I can father no children for the
future. There is no future for me now.

Sure you can, Rolf, Lindsay
said. —You’ll see.

Nothing can ever make it
work again, Rolf said, and sobbed once. —I can never be a father
now thanks to that blond bitch and what she did to me.

Sure you can, Rolf, honey,
darling, Lindsay said, and wagged Rolf’s limp member for him.
—Really, you will. You just don’t feel like yourself right now,
honey, darling.

Did I ever tell you about
how I was wounded seriously during the war? Rolf said. —Well, I
was. I was just a little boy, but no matter. In Diisseldorf. One
hundred yards from the Rhine. I have this scar. If you wish, I will
let you look at it sometime. I let the blond bitch see it, for all
she cared. My own grandmother was killed in the war. Well, she
died. An uncle was killed by a bomb. I know history firsthand.
Please pull on it a little more, please. There. See what I told
you. Nothing will ever make it work right again.

I’m sure it will work again,
honey, Lindsay said. —Darling. Sweetheart, you just don’t feel well
right now. Who would! Put your faith in us, Rolf, darling. I am
German, too. Did I tell you that? Before it was shortened to Wolfe,
my grandmother’s maiden name was Wolfesburgher, which means people
of the wolf in German, Lindsay said.

That is nice, Rolf said.
—See there, nothing doing.

Lindsay pulled Rolf's limp
penis up and down as rapidly, albeit gently, as she possibly could.
Then she tried wagging it gently side to side.

It is no use, Rolf said, and
sighed deeply. —I am the only child. I don’t have any brothers. My
brothers are all dead. All killed in that war.

That’s awful, Lindsay said,
as she alternately rotated Rolf’s limp appendage clockwise and then
counterclockwise. —How many brothers did you lose, precious,
baby?

Eight, Rolf said. —Do that
next thing for me, please. Please for me.

What next thing, darling?
Lindsay said.

The next base, Rolf said.
—Please for me. Go to the next base, please.

What next base, Rolf?
Lindsay said. —Sweetheart, darling?

More like this please, Rolf
said, and he pressed the back of Lindsay’s head, his fingers in her
hair. Had she washed her hair that morning? The night before? Rolf
slowly pressed Lindsay’s face down toward the limp penis she was
currendy whipping about in a path that vaguely resembled a figure
eight.

I don’t know, Lindsay said.
—I’ve never done that before.

Please more for me, Rolf
said. —The blond bitch would never. Not once even. For all she
cared.

She wouldn’t? Lindsay
said.

Please for me, Rolf said.
—Oh, see! Look! There. Look, it is working almost again. Please.
Yes. Oh, thank you. Thank you for the sake of my future, darling.
Please. Thank you, yes. Please. Yes, honey. Please. Oh, please,
darling.

Rolfs damp crotch smelled
like wet leaves. Lindsay had thought of rain, how it smelled, and
how it might sound in the oak tree’s leaves above the secret
chamber. From somewhere in Shakespeare Gardens a cat yowled, and
for all the world it sounded to Lindsay like the painful cry of a
baby. And then, in Lindsay’s mind’s eye, the bald little heads of
babies pressed up out of the earth in slow motion like mushroom
caps after a rain.

The Garden City of the
Northwest

1

Jim Stark had never set foot
before in the garden city of the Northwest, but from the moment he
stepped off the bus late one spring night he knew he was home
again. Due to a dumb little fracas Jim had foolishly gotten into at
a dive near the Spokane bus station during a long layover the
evening before, he was wearing shades to hide black eyes, and the
knuckles of both his hands were covered with goofy-looking
Band-Aids. Who was that mysterious, dangerous-looking, but dashing
stranger, anyway? the drunken, late-night, riffraff, bus-station
denizens must have surely wondered. What does he want in this
town?

Jim took a third-floor
corner room at the Palace Hotel, which overlooked Higgins Avenue,
the main drag, and collapsed fully clothed onto a creaky old bed
for his first dreamless sleep in years. The first thing Jim did the
next morning was pour a finger of Jack Daniel’s into a cloudy
glass, and with a hearty gulp swallow a half hit of windowpane
acid. Jim didn’t even brush his teeth. Jim could do this with
impunity now that he was out on his own. He could let his teeth rot
and fry his brain at will now, with nobody around to boss him. Jim
pulled a chair up to the window and positioned his feet on the
sill. He fired up a fat joint and puffed on it like a tycoon. Soon
he felt that magical old-timey light. It washed over him like
water.