Study in Perfect (10 page)

By the time he steered his wagon onto Market Street and pulled into our narrow driveway at 1611, he was radiating, blood a low purr. Up the steep stairs, one hand, sometimes two, on the pipe handrail to the second floor apartment, where his wife and two young daughters slept in three tiny bedrooms.

We slid into deeper sleep when his book bag slumped into the captain's chair. He was home.

Something goes BUMP, the cat hits the door, head or hat misjudging, or perhaps it is only the door itself slamming into the wall.

The children are seated by the window, the weather chill and rainy, not at all conducive to imaginative play. They startle, lifting an inch off their butts. Even the curtains jump, and then the door swings open.

Not a straight line on him. He doesn't appear to have a skeleton! Hat beating his foot inside the door, it leans that far forward. Did he roll out of bed, tail like a mangled pipe cleaner, forgetting to shed his jammies and put on something more presentable? Why isn't the cat at work, doing something constructive? On two legs he lurches in, tipping his hat, balancing his drippy umbrella on the end of his thumb. He knows some games; he has saved up a bunch of tricks to make a great day. This cat brings
fun
; he doesn't care if mother is out running errands or a meeting, or anything else.

“Come on …” he pleaded, proposing on our honeymoon that we blow several hundred on a meal at Harry's Bar and then sip
a bottle of wine on a gondola ride through Venice's back canals. Seventy dollars for a half-hour! Under this bridge, duck, quick. Let's go for more! The curried sole with polenta, the lazy dark, sonic with far-off festivity, and a traffic jam made of boats. But to tell the truth, twenty-five years later that's what we remember, little more.

Italy seeded a taste for motorcycles too, and though I protested it was groceries we were burning, he bought a bright red Vespa with matching helmets. Scents and temperature brightened unlike anything we'd known in a car. Lilac! Manure! Fried chicken! We dipped into a gully like a glass of ice water, took the full hit of a mown lawn, though I warned him to avoid the shavings, shouting through my face mask and the wind. Conversation was ridiculous, riding was risky, but it was a magnificent thrill.

Happy to play the fool in shrill animal voices the children loved (Wamu the Jamaican rag doll rescued from a burning building by Purpley the stuffed elephant, who stretched out his trunk so she could slide down), he performed mesmerizing dramas without the soggy moral or neat conclusion. Sure his face was a little too red like he was about to pop. Sure there was something disquieting in all that energy. Dads were supposed to be grown-ups. But yes, yes, another game, another game! He gave each girl a full glass of water, filled his mouth, and exploded in a spit-take. Soon they were feeding each other knock-knock jokes, bursting before the punch line was out, soaked and drooling. He bought seven cans of shaving cream on Halloween and they decorated the rhododendrons, gleefully appearing later with sprayed-on beards, scary eyebrows, and beehive hairdos.

According to the company's literature, over 370 million cases of Seagram's Seven have been sold since 1934, giving this brand the distinction of being consumed more often than any other brand of whiskey in the history of the United States. The ingredients list is straightforward—corn, rye, rye malt, barley malt, yeast, and water. The corn comes exclusively from fields in Indiana, while the other grains are imported from farms in the Midwest. The name “whiskey” is a Gaelic translation of the Latin phrase
aqua vitae
, meaning “water of life.” Seagram's was the favored drink of “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott, a heavy-metal guitarist before he was murdered onstage by a fan. Dimebag mixed his Seagram's with a shot of Crown Royal and a splash of Coke, a drink he called “Black Tooth Grin.”

Dr. Seuss's feline protagonist may be “a cheerful, exotic and exuberant form of chaos,” as the book's jacket copy asserts. But look at the children's faces watching the cat. They are not necessarily smiling. Their eyes resemble tunnels.
Oh, oh, oh
, they mouth as the cat balances the books and the tray and the cake and the boat and the fish in the bowl and the milk and the cup all on one foot hopping on the ball with its stripe round the middle. Now the rake and the red fan and the wooden toy man. Only the fan seems secured by the cat's tail, shaped like a cup hook. “But that is not all! / Oh no. / That is not all …,” as the action accelerates. Little wonder Sally's red hair bow quivers with anxiety as she grabs her brother's arm and they both plant their feet like croquet wickets.

Down comes the cake, and the frosting slaps over the plate, and the milk spills (but the bottle did not break!), and the rake's
bent, and the boat looks like it's sailing on a wave of butter and cream. Down come the glass and the fan and the book splayed like a tent, and down comes the fish, oh the fish, tossed out of its fishbowl into a teapot, as a matter of fact, where he frowns, one fin in the air, “‘Now look what you did!' / Said the fish to the cat. / ‘Now look at this house!'”

Betty, cashier at the Rite Aid, had a steep beak with reading glasses perched at the very tip—classic Woolworth's fifties—wiry black hair, and veiny hands. Never satisfied with a simple financial transaction, she took mental notes. Whose wallet was stuffed with crisp twenties or pilled singles. Whose child pilfered a Baby Ruth and was he punished adequately? She sold booze to men, women, street people, rich people, and kept count, as if bottles were Weight Watchers points. Not much of a task for her memory the professor who purchased his daily fifth, sometimes missing a day if he sprung for a gallon. Her tongue clicked and slid over her teeth. “Is that
all
for you?” she asked. No response. “Sir? That'll be $13.53.”

Years of this, she figured out which lady was the wife—the brusque, all-business one who didn't seem to care for conversation, who checked her change and left without a thank you. “Sweetie, you know I see your husband in here nearly every day getting him a fifth of that whiskey over there.” Caught up short, I sputtered under my breath: “Whatever.” Thinking: Nosey parker. Just do your job, please, and shut up. We're doing fine. He contemplates the big picture, I do the details. I
like
details. Flight arrangements, bills, doctors and dentists, chimney sweeping, furnace repair, taxes, ditching the sour milk and
moldy bread. All the right moves we made in our lives—the babies, our relocation to the coast where he juggled a part-time teaching job, job search, book project, toddlers so I could have some writing time too, all without family around—those were his ideas. I did the packing. Didn't mind, couldn't imagine passing that job over to him. Commotion of glasses mixed with silverware, everyone's unfolded clothes thrown into the same suitcase or two. Who could live with that?

The science of fermentation is known as zymology. French chemist Louis Pasteur was the first known zymologist, when in 1854 he connected yeast to fermentation. Studying the fermentation of sugar to alcohol by yeast, Pasteur concluded that the fermentation was catalyzed by a vital force, called “ferments,” within the yeast cells. The ferments were thought to function only within living organisms. “Alcoholic fermentation is an act correlated with the life and organization of the yeast cells, not with the death or putrefaction of the cells,” he wrote.