JD (36 page)

Mickey let go of my hand, a couple days before he left. I cannot take it up again. He will go on without me. Here, maybe, is what I'm really afraid of: that seeing him now would be the
first
time I see him alive, maybe this is the life he was meant for, and not the life I thought I was giving him. Maybe I'm just scared to watch him move on without me.

As I went on without Pop, free to go on finally but also
without
, as I had always been without. I had always been without his love-- I got praise or heckling, depending on his mood, but never love. And then at last he wasn't around anymore. I didn't see his shadow everywhere, reading in it everywhere that maybe I was the one who had withheld his love.

His last night, I was impatient--I can't even remember what for, some assignation, or maybe I just wanted a drink. Just impatient to get out, as who doesn't want to get out of a hospital room? I said, “See you in the morning,” took his hand, held it a moment. His eyes were closed, I figured he'd fallen asleep. I was going to let go and found he was holding on tight. I let him, for another second or two, then I felt awkward, we weren't hand-holding guys. I pulled away. I didn't see him in the morning.

For years I have reproached myself, figured: he knew this was it, he was trying to say good-bye. I'm not even sure that's possible, do people really know? “Johnny won't be back till eight and I'm clocking out at four in the morning.” I'm not even sure he was holding onto me personally, maybe just holding. But after all these rationalizations, I know it was true, he was holding me good-bye and I pulled away.

So I tell myself I am sparing Mickey this, that I am saving him from having to pull away. I tell myself.

Of course I agreed with Jonathan that this seemed like a bitter joke, but it was our last chance to see him before they shipped him off to Arkansas for some graduate education in mayhem. Jonathan wouldn't go. I nagged, I begged, I told him it might be the last time he'd see Mickey alive. He didn't even answer. Now I have seen his answers. But I think I already understood: if it really was the last time, if maybe Mickey wasn't coming home, he wanted to remember our Mickey, not Mickey-the-soldier. I would as soon my own last memory weren't of Private Mickey. But at the time it seemed inhuman not to want to see him, touch him.

I took a bus from the Port Authority terminal. I had to go the night before, because the ceremony was early and the bus—two buses, I think, with a long wait for a transfer somewhere deep in New Jersey—took hours. Riding with me were, I guessed, a few other parents and a lot of desolate boys returning from leave. I stayed in a little cabin at a place called something like Kozy Kottages. There was no TV, I'd forgotten to pack anything to read, and I seriously thought about hiking down the highway to one of the roadhouses that seemed to be the pillars of the local economy. Yes, indeed, have a few drinks, get picked up by a soldier. Surely Jonathan wasn't just sitting at home. And I already had the Kozy Kottage. It is only thirty years later, and after having read a little too much of Jonathan, that I see this fancy as skirting the incestuous.

In the morning I sat with the other parents on folding steel chairs. I tried to chat with my neighbors. “New York City,” they'd say. “My, that's a long way to come.” We all ran out of small talk pretty quickly; there was just a long funereal silence until our sons filed in.

Some of the parents looked as pleased and proud as if they were sitting on folding chairs in Harvard Yard. Not the fathers—even the ones with steel-colored crew cuts were reticent and withdrawn—just a few of the mothers, murmuring, “Oh, look at our boy.” I almost wanted to scream at them, “Do you know what they're going to do to your boy?” Only some time later did I understand that they knew exactly, yes, thank you. And, as there was nothing further they could do to shelter their sons, they could only look at them. At the things into which the army had sculpted them.

I almost didn't recognize Mickey. Not just because his head was shaved, nor because he must have gained fifteen hard pounds. It was his face: taut, wary, the subtle mouth that had been the only semaphore of his feelings drawn into a thin illegible line. I wondered if he could see me from where he stood, or if he was even looking for me.

I don't remember much of the ceremony. The Pledge, I guess, maybe some patriotic song, a speech about the war or valor or something. A roll call beginning, as Jonathan surmised, with
Ascher
.

Afterward, each family gathered around its boy, separate little clusters scattered on the boot-worn marching ground. I found Mickey, even as I hugged him I could feel him looking around for his father. I had been trying to think of what I might say when he asked why Jonathan hadn't come. But he didn't ask.

I was so conscious of the gravity of our little time together that I couldn't think of what to say. I managed, finally, some remark about how big he had gotten. He smirked at me.

It was when I saw that smirk, if ever, that my love flickered for an instant before rekindling. Mickey wore a face I knew: I'd seen it on some of the Dartmouth or Williams boys who showed up at mixers at Smith, and earlier on some of the boys in Roland Park. Arrogant, coarse, stupid. Had the army made this boy or merely uncovered him?

He talked about what happened next. “I got a few more weeks of training stateside, and then a few weeks in country before my final posting. By then—you know, they say it may be almost over, it could be over before I even get there.” His tone was gruff and condescending, the he-man withholding from the frail female what she couldn't handle. “And if not,” he said, putting on a grim face like a boy playing savage. “I'm ready to take care of myself.”

They had killed him. My complicated, inscrutable Mickey: they had sandblasted away everything Mickey about him, leaving this smirking, brutal, standard-issue grunt. Who must always have been inside there. Or maybe, I decided—had to believe—this was just some armor he had put on, Mickey was somewhere under there.

I held him, tight as I ever had, as if I could squeeze my way through to the Mickey inside. After a minute he pulled away from my embrace, his face stern. I thought at the time because he was embarrassed to hug me too long in front of his buddies. But now I think—Jonathan has made me think, but maybe I knew it all along—he was saying: too late to hold me now.

September 15, 1972

Martha headed off to see Mickey yesterday. Last night I went into his room and lay on his bed, on top of the New York Yankees bedspread. I had not lain there before. We had sat together on that bed, those months when we smoked pot. I had tucked him into it, years before that, or sometimes I sat on the edge and read
Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel
. For a while he demanded that book night after night, I could probably recite it today. More easily than my own steam shovel book.

Last night I lay down and felt the room around me as he must have felt it. The window to my left, the desk straight ahead, with the Donald Duck clock on it--stopped, with no one winding it. To my right the bookshelves. With my books mostly, H to R. My presence physically crowding him out, just a shelf or two saved for Mickey's own books and albums and the unfinished
Queen Mary
.

Perhaps I was only imagining that I could smell him on the sheets, the pillowcase. Martha is an efficient woman: she probably washed them as soon as he left for Fort Dix. So he'd have clean linen whenever he came home on leave. But if he hadn't left behind even a trace of his funk, no sweat, no jism, he had left his shape there in the mattress. I fitted my body into the hollow left by Mickey's.

W
illis,” I say over the phone. “The SLS people can't find the binder with the 1973 journal.”

“1973? Um … that would be the last one, right?”

“That's right. I've read the others.”

“Oh, you have?” I suppose he is thinking: if she's read the others, why the hell would she be looking for more? “I remember, there isn't a binder for ‘73. Actually, there weren't binders for the others, I did that. They were just in folders in his cabinet.”

“Ah.” That's why Jonathan couldn't find them in the end, if that's what he was looking for. They were just folders among folders, all with unreadable labels.

“And ‘73 wasn't even a folder of its own. Just one entry stuck by accident in a file with other stuff. A correspondence file, 1958 or ‘59, I think. And I … I didn't make a new folder for some reason, just stuck it back in where I'd found it.”

“So, if I got those letter files …”

“Yeah, it must be there. I'm practically sure it was ‘59.”

“Okay, thanks.”

Willis says, “Whatever happened with this guy you were dealing with? Marks, was it?”

“Philip Marks. I let him get started. He did start actually, a few weeks ago, looked at the 1964 journal.”

“Ouch.” Willis laughs. “I remember, that's the one I'm a clown

I had forgotten: Willis is the only other person who has read about himself in Jonathan's journals. We are a little club. “You come off better than I did.”

“I don't know, Martha. I mean, I know he wrote some spiteful things. But—it's not just me, everyone who knew him understood this—he would have been desolate without you.”

“Funny he couldn't find the room to write about that.”

“Maybe he only wrote about things he wasn't sure of.” This reassurance seems glib to me. “Anyway, you're letting Marks go ahead with the biography?”

“I still don't know. Probably not, I guess.”

“So you're just reading for yourself now.”

“Should I?” There is a long pause. “Willis, you left it hidden. Should I? I'm asking, I'll do what you say.”

“You've read everything else.”

“Yes.”

“And you're okay?”

“No.” I find myself chuckling a little. Willis gets it, not as slow as Jonathan said, and chuckles with me.

“He wrote it for you,” Willis says. “I don't know what the rest of the journals were for, but it seems to me he wrote those last few pages for you to read.”

“Then I should.”

“I … I can't take the responsibility, Martha. I mean I never could, I guess that's why I gave up so long ago. It's between the two of you. You have to decide if there's anything more you need to hear from him.”

J
onathan's last entry is in the 1958 correspondence folder, not ‘59. A few pages in longhand on ruled paper. At the top—in a hand other than Jonathan's, Willis's I assume—is written,
Undated entry, April or May [?] 1973
.

Then it begins, the writing shaky but recognizably Jonathan's, in the schoolboy script that was the least anarchic thing about him:

Can't find journals. If I found them, can't read, can't know whether to save or destroy them. So they will stay here. Martha says she can still read my handwriting. I must try to say the last thing
.

The day the officer came Martha and I sat on the stairs till he went away. I ran down and followed him. Caught him halfway down the block. Colonel, I went. Major, he corrected. Then, Mr. Ascher? I nodded. Sir, I don't want to talk out here. I mean—

I offered him a cigarette. He was nonplused, took it. Major, he couldn't have been thirty-five. Hair cut very close, golden corona as if his head were eclipsing the sun. He bent to accept the light, then stood straight. Brought his hand to his lips for another puff as sharply as if saluting. We were a step from Faherty's. Let me get you a beer or something, Major
.

His eyes narrowed. Was I crazy? In shock? He shrugged: not protocol, but no easy way to get back on the script, why not a drink?

I was crazy, in shock. Also watching myself clinically. No, awestruck or horrified. That in that moment some part of me that wasn't numb could think about making him
.

Two or three bourbons. Suddenly the major was sloppy drunk. No stage between ramrod straight and jelly. He was babbling about this guy Charlie. Best guy I ever knew, he said, over and over. Me and Charlie, we was in this clearing. I mean, this close, no more than—The major looked around, pointed behind me. No more than here to that pinball machine. That close
.

I turned to look at the pinball machine. The animal part of me that wasn't numb noticed the pinball player. I see him now. T-shirt disclosing the vee of muscle above his butt as he bent over the machine
.

That close, the major said. Looking each other in the eye. I raised my piece and Charlie didn't even flinch. Just looked at me, minutes it felt like, till I pulled the trigger
.

I whirled around and faced the major. He was staring at his drink, nodding. Best frickin guy I ever knew
.

Oh. Charlie was the Vietcong, that's what he meant. What an asshole, I thought. What an ungodly mix of vicious and maudlin. Though maybe he was saying how it really was, maybe he knew things I didn't know. Things you only knew if you stood across from someone in a clearing and raised your piece
.

Bullshit. That's how they keep their hold. Making the rest of us think they've seen something holy
.

I offered him another cigarette. Just to break the rhythmic keening, best frickin guy best frickin guy. He took it, uncrossed his eyes long enough to light it
.

I wondered maybe—whatever had happened to Mickey, wasn't the major supposed to tell me? I wondered if Mickey thought whoever killed him was a wonderful frickin guy
.

The major looked over at me, puzzled. Who's this guy? Then slouched back, took a drag of the cigarette, nodded sagely at me. I turned to look for the pinball boy, but he was gone. No one left at the bar but a bag lady and a tiny trim Negro in a frayed suit. It was the major or nothing. I heard myself thinking that and was again thrown into that eerie otherness. Marveling that one part of me could be adding up my chances for a quick lay while the rest of me slid into darkness
.