The Cry of the Sloth (6 page)

Sincerely,

Andrew Whittaker

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Dear Jolie,

It is three a.m. I fell asleep early but then woke up at midnight and have been awake since. I am not even tired. I seem to be able to get by with very little sleep lately. I thought about going for a walk but am afraid it will rain again, so I am going to tell you about something I discovered in the basement. Do you remember the stack of photo albums we carted over from Mama’s place? It wouldn’t surprise me that you don’t. We were so harried by work at the time, and so caught up in our quarrels, and so angry, really, at Mama for the way she was behaving, that we scarcely did more than leaf through a few pages before stowing them in the basement with the rest of her trash. I had forgotten all about them myself. But last week found me sitting on one of those blue plastic milk boxes, my back propped against the warm metal of the faintly vibrating clothes dryer, with the albums spread open on the floor at my feet. The rhythmic clicking of the dryer—I had washed my plaid shirt, the one with the zipper—mingled with the susurration of the rain and the odor of mold in the basement to create the perfect ambience for a journey into the past. I went through the albums page by page. What struck me first was that Mama had glued the photos in there without regard to order. A photo of Papa at fifty would be followed by one of Peg at two. She used to keep all of them in a cardboard box at the back of her bedroom closet, and every Christmas Eve she would drag it out and dump the pictures in a heap on the living-room rug, where we would sit and dig through them and sometimes fight over them. That was a long time ago. I suppose when she got the albums—it must have been after she started saving greenback stamps, at the same time as she “earned” (as she liked to put it) the set of cheapo aluminum pans she gave us—she just stuck the pictures in higgledy-piggledy as they came to hand.

I suppose this randomness is what caused us when we were leafing through the albums back then to miss the odd thing I am going to tell you. I could not be certain of it myself until I had removed all the photos from the albums and laid them out on the floor, even though that meant badly ripping a fair number.

You remember how I used to complain that I had practically no memories of childhood, at least nothing comparable to the stuff other people seem able to dredge up at the drop of a handkerchief? You, for example, are able to prattle for hours about things as trivial as the ruffled dress you wore to a little friend’s birthday party when you were six and she was seven, while I possess, as testimony to my existence in the past, nothing but a few dull or squalid images stuck in my head like snapshots, static and without relation to anything before or after, undated and therefore almost without meaning. In college, when people would sit around swapping memories, I was forced to make things up.

Some of the photos have notations on the back, e.g., “Peg and Papa at Deer Lake,” “Andy and Peg eating watermelon,” but those rarely include a date. So once I had cleared a space in the living room and could finally apply myself to putting the pictures in temporal order I had to rely almost entirely on evidence furnished by the pictures themselves: the gradually increasing size of both Peg and myself, the steady puckering and sallowing of my parents’ skin, the ineluctable swelling of their waistlines, the appearance and then disappearance of several cats and dogs, the gradual thinning of Papa’s hair and the increasingly ineffectual combings with which he attempted to hide it, and of course the progression in the model years of the automobiles against which we were posed with depressing regularity. It took me two days of arrangement and rearrangement—in the course of which I several times had to shift hundreds of photos a fraction of a centimeter one way or another on the floor in order to open a space farther down the line big enough to insert a single new one—before I at last had them all laid out in a vast spiral with me in a lacy bassinet at the center and me again at the end, this time a sullen and shirtless teenager seated on the front steps of our house on Laurel Avenue, a menacing scowl just visible behind two upright middle fingers.

There are pictures of me when I was small—alone or with Peg or with animals, at parties and at Christmas—up to perhaps the third grade. These pictures show a solemn, unsmiling child, serious and yet—one senses this—probably not sad. His hair is blond, or at least it’s not brown. Then there are pictures of me as an acne-pocked teenager, hair several shades darker (due perhaps to the over-ample application of Vitalis or Brylcreem suggested by its unnatural gleam) with pants pulled very high and cinched tightly by a narrow belt. I wanted to write “cinched painfully tight,” but since I can’t actually remember how it felt that would have been only a guess. Mismatched argyle socks are clearly visible at the base of the hitched pants, and I am wearing heavy brown shoes at a epoch when other boys were wearing penny loafers. And there is a shot of me in a baggy bathing suit at some lake, my skinny legs looking like bamboo shoots in oversized flowerpots, but of course upside down—the flowerpots, I mean, would have to be upside down. And of course I have grown larger, though at first glance my head appears not to have kept pace. In these later photos, without exception, I appear sullen and resentful. Perhaps that was how I was. Or perhaps I appear that way only because I didn’t like having my picture taken. In fact, knowing my picture was about to be taken must have made me think with shame of my appearance, as it probably would still if I could feel that it was
my
appearance, if I could manage to greet the person in those pictures as someone other than a stranger, if, in other words, I could
remember
him. I look at the pictures, and I say to myself,
Yes, that’s me,
but I don’t feel the warmth of recognition.

Between these two groups of photographs intervenes, I estimate, a gap of some seven or eight years. I retain only the meagerest handful of recollections from that epoch, and now, with all the snapshots laid out on the floor, I have discovered
there are no photographs either!
Why, during all this long interval, so important in the life of a child, did no one bother to take my picture? There are innumerable shots of Peg from the same period: Peg at the beach, Peg on her pony. By all rights I should be there with her in some of them. In fact, in a number of the pictures she appears to be standing at the side of the frame, as if she were leaving room for me. It’s as though I had vanished, a cute kid, or at any rate, a normal one, who disappears for a long while, only to reappear as a grossly unattractive, larger individual. I would write Peg about this except I know she would never answer.

It was only tonight, while I was lying in bed not able to sleep, that it dawned upon me that not only are so many of my memories
like
snapshots, in their isolation and immobility, they are
of
snapshots, of these
same
snapshots, which as an adult I must have seen numerous times at Mama’s house, every Christmas in fact. Apart from them, I have next to nothing.

Your card arrived this afternoon. I had hoped you would be more understanding about the money. Two months is not going to cut it, though it will help. It’s just possible, assuming I can rent this place and two others that are vacant, that I will be in a position to send you something more next month. But the fact is they are in terrible shape and I don’t have the money to fix them. I know New York is expensive, but no one asked you to move there. As for me, I drive all the way across town to the new Safeway, robbing valuable hours from other things, just to save a few pennies. You might, as you hop into your next taxi to Manhattan, think of that.

Love,

Andrew

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potatoes (lots)

cans (chili, soups, Big John’s Beans)

liverwurst

marg

hocks

puffs

cupcakes

maybe steak or meat

p. chop

shoe polish

tuna

sardines

cheese snack

froz fries—coupons

lunch stuff

bread

cereal

t.p. (lots)

miracle whip

lightbulbs

money order

½" shut-off valve

vodka

earplugs

¶

Dear Harold,

Of course I remember you. I think it interesting that you have gone into agriculture. I myself feel very close to the land even when I am exiled in the city, as I must be, because of its advantages to someone who must always be before the public, in its eye, as they say, or up its ass, as I sometimes am. As for machinery, etc., I couldn’t judge. So you
did
marry Catherine in the end. How we did vie for her! May the best man win, as they say, and I am sure he did. Jolie and I separated two years ago. I have kept the house, a Victorian box much too large for me, which I am finding impossible to keep remotely tidy. I spend several hours cleaning, and a few days later it’s back where it was. It’s quite a lonely house sometimes and I’ve thought of getting a dog, but I’m afraid of getting a biter. I have an office in the house, where I do my writing and editing, so I don’t have to go out very often. I imagine one of the great things about living in the country is not having neighbors. Of course if you are in this area you must stop by, though I don’t think I could “tie one on” with you. I have some small health problems. Nothing serious but I have to be a wee bit careful. And the people in the bars have grown so terribly young. I imagine that you, working outside in all kinds of weather, are just bursting with good health, and you probably look younger than you are. I have a funny noise in my chest sometimes. We make choices so early, and on the basis of practically no information, and then we end up with these different lives that we are really stuck with. It’s all so depressing. We get ourselves boxed in and then there seems no way out. I think if I did more exercise I would feel better, but I don’t want to start anything too strenuous, you know, because of the noise. I am basically a desk worker. Very boring. Be sure to let me know if you are passing, as I don’t like surprises. What kind of things do you grow?

Andy

AUGUST

Dear Mama,

I’ve been going through your old photo albums, looking for a few nice pictures for your room. How funny those old bathing suits seem now, though you were quite a dish! My memories of Papa are of a shortish, fat man with a cigar, and it’s strange to see him looking so trim, and with that little mustache, like the bad guy in an old movie. Glancing over the photos, I couldn’t help noticing that there are hardly any pictures of me between the ages of about seven and fifteen, and that has set me to wondering. You used to tell me how disappointed Papa was in me when I was a child, at a time when the sons of all his friends were excelling. Actually I think the word you used was “embarrassed.” Could that have led him—out of grief, perhaps—to not want to have any pictures of me around the house? I can imagine he might experience them as an unpleasant doubling. I mean there I was and there I would be again on the mantel or someplace. Or he might have worried that the photographs would later become painful reminders. If this seems unlikely to you, as it does to me, maybe you have some other explanation, in which case I would be happy to hear it. Perhaps you could drop me a line as I’m not going to be able to run up next month as planned.

Your loving son,

Andy

p.s. to Mrs. Robinson:

I know, if Mama is getting this letter, it is because you are reading it to her, for which I say thanks a million. I know how forgetful she is and how spiteful sometimes, especially when she feels she is being criticized. I am not blaming her for not taking any pictures of me for all those years. I don’t care about pictures; I am just wondering why there aren’t any. I mean, most mothers
enjoy
taking pictures. I hope that despite your understandable difficulties with Mama, or perhaps even because of them, you will consent to help me out on this matter. You will need to find some way of getting Mama off her guard. For example, you could chat about your own children, if you have any, or you could just make some up, if you don’t, and then you could remark how hard it is to take good pictures of children, they being so rambunctious. At that point Mama might chime in with some information of her own. For example, she might say that it’s easier to take pictures of girls, and that would be an important clue. I leave the details to your good judgment. I would be very grateful if you would drop me a line about anything you might learn. I think it only fair that you accept the ten-dollar bill you will find taped inside the envelope. I didn’t want it to fall out in front of Mama, as she would naturally assume it was for her.

Sincerely,

Andy Whittaker

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Dear Contributor,

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to read your work. After careful consideration, we have reluctantly concluded that it does not meet our needs at this time.

The Editors at
Soap

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Dear Miss Moss,

Thank you for the chocolates, the pictures, and the wallet. Did you make that yourself? Also, of course, the new poems and the envelope. I’ll get to the poems just as soon as I can find a spare hour, when I can give them my full attention. I am touched that you thought of sending me this package in the midst of everything. And I do appreciate your words of concern at my situation. However, the financial entanglements I mentioned really have nothing at all to do with embezzlement or things of that sort, just a little accounting mix-up. And the fact that I am being forced to move does not mean that I am “on the run.” Sorry to disappoint. I’m afraid you’ll have to look elsewhere for your “shady dealer.” I am, I regret, not nearly that interesting.

And sorry again, but I really can’t give you
any
advice about your situation at home. Furthermore, since you don’t tell me what was in the diary, you cannot expect me to pass judgment on the behavior of your parents. I will say that as a general rule I think people ought not to read other people’s private papers. But that said, the fact that you left the diary open on the coffee table suggests to me that you were, to put it bluntly, spoiling for a fight. As for God, I am not simply an agnostic—I am an indifferentist. The ministers, pastors, and padres I have met have generally been fools or charlatans. I surmise from your description Rev. Hanley is both. I admire your ability to make a funny story out of what must have been a really painful interview. You must keep in mind that it’s a big world beyond Rufus. You should also keep in mind that it will still be there next year, probably.