Tomcat in Love (10 page)

At daybreak I was alone.

They were gone—all six of them. The radio, too, and any sign of human presence.

I searched all morning.

I waited all afternoon.

It occurred to me, as the sun sank low, that this had to be a bizarre practical joke. At any instant they would come creeping up on me—jumping out, whooping—but that richly imagined instant never arrived. When dark settled, I retreated to my clump of bushes.
Jungle
, I kept thinking. The word itself seemed haunted, and even now, decades later, those two syllables signify betrayal and panic and helplessness, far beyond anything listed in your standard
Roget’s
.

The next morning I set off for the firebase, a vague optimism pushing me along. South, I thought—down the mountain.

Patiently, trying to encourage myself, I took inventory of all the
reasons not to panic. I had my weapon. I had rations and ammunition. I had three canteens of water. And common sense. Plenty of it.

In twenty minutes I was thoroughly lost.

Everything had become everything else: trees blending into more trees. To go down I had to go up. But I could not
find
up.

At midday I crossed an unfamiliar footbridge. Hours later, in a clearing, I came upon an abandoned stone pagoda. I made camp there for the night, a long, drizzly, foggy night, then resumed my march just after daybreak. No left or right, no direction to things, just the dense green jungle kaleidoscoping into deeper jungle, and for the entire day I followed a narrow dirt trail that wound through the mountains without pattern or purpose. This was wilderness. High, green, shaggy country. Quiet country. Lush country. Landfalls of botany, mountains growing out of mountains. Greenhouse country. Huge palms and banana trees, wildflowers, waist-high grasses, vines and wet thickets and humidity. Enemy country too. Hostile in the most fundamental sense.

Terror kept me going.

All day, as I trudged along, my thoughts were wired to an internal transformer of despair and rage. I yelled at the jungle. I envisioned scenarios of revenge, how someday I would acquire the means to retaliate against my six so-called comrades. Napalm strikes. Grenades rolling into foxholes. I smiled at these thoughts, then found myself trembling.

Perhaps it was fatigue, perhaps madness, but I suddenly allowed myself to collapse in the middle of the trail. I watched the sky; I did not move. Even at dusk, as a wet fog settled in, I lay there paralyzed, wrapped up in my poncho, listening to sounds that should never be listened to. Voices in the fog, other voices inside me.

Lost, I thought. Lost as lost gets.

At this point, as promised, our digressive loop becomes progressive. We circle forward to the present.

Lost then, lost now.

Needless to say, I am a survivor. I found my way out of that
spooky jungle, which is a tale I must set aside for the appropriate moment. Here it is sufficient to underscore three salient consequences of the whole experience: my sensitivity to people leaving me, my terror of betrayal, my lifelong propensity for exacting vengeance.

It should be clear, too, that I am not without backbone.

The timid scholar inside me perished forever in those mountains. Stung by treachery, I learned how to respond. And in Tampa, abetted by Mrs. Robert Kooshof, I would soon be bringing some extremely serious shit to bear.

M
rs. Robert Kooshof accepted my no-frills travel offer,
^*
and late the next afternoon I made our reservations for Florida. Afterward, we raised a toast, had supper à la buff, made spicy love, then dressed and strolled down the street to Lorna Sue’s big yellow house. Here, at last, was what had brought me back to Owago. To face the foe. To survey defenses and gather crucial intelligence.

Given my history, the Zylstra homestead had always seemed vaguely threatening, at times edging up on eerie, and as we approached the front door I felt my heart doing little somersaults. For an instant I nearly turned away. Courageously, however, I made a fist, risked my knuckles, and was soon rewarded by a loud grinding
noise within, succeeded by metallic squeaks, succeeded by a voice yelling, “Jesus Christ, just
wait
a minute, for Chrissake!” A moment later I was gazing down upon a wizened old lady in a wheelchair: Lorna Sue’s paternal grandmother—Earleen Zylstra by name—a creature riddled to the core with spite and mental illness. We had not encountered each other since my wedding day, but the old woman cocked her head in recognition. “You,” she said. “I thought you was ancient history.”

“Alas,” I said, “I weren’t.”

(Such grammar brings out the animal in me.)

Mrs. Kooshof whispered the word
condescension
, digging a sharp Dutch elbow into my ribs. It seemed prudent to withhold further venom; I forced a smile, extended a hand, and informed Earleen that she was looking fit.

The old woman’s beady eyes glistened. “Fuck fit. You want in?”

“Splendid,” said I.

“Well, Jesus Christ,” Earleen grunted.

She spun around in her wheelchair and led us down a filthy hallway, through air that smelled of stewed underwear. In the living room a large TV set boomed out at full blather, six or seven brutish relatives camped before it in various states of stupefaction. A few I recognized, among them Lorna Sue’s mother and father—Ned and Velva. But no one rose. No one glanced up. Hesitantly, I stepped forward, but at the same instant an ill-shaven old nun—an aunt, I believe—swiveled and made a slicing motion across her throat. “Wait’ll it’s
over
!” she snapped. “Jesus Christ.”

Amazing, I thought.

It was to these garbled chromosomes, this biological catastrophe that I had once cast my marital fortunes.

After a few seconds had ticked by, Mrs. Kooshof and I took seats on the soiled carpet, where with the rest of the household we witnessed the concluding minutes of a program that featured homemade videotapes of people falling off curbs and chairs and bicycles. The slack-jawed Zylstra assemblage found these mishaps hypnotic. For a moment I nearly forgave Lorna Sue and Herbie their considerable sins. After all, what else could one expect from this puddle of
baboon genes? (During my years of marriage I had done everything possible to avoid the whole loathsome clan, often inventing excuses to explain my absence at family gatherings. One Christmas I was diagnosed with lupus; the following summer I received a rare summons to the Vatican.) Naturally enough, my hands-off policy had caused domestic turmoil between Lorna Sue and me. Antisocial, she claimed. A compulsive liar. The word
pathological
had popped up. In truth, I will admit, I do at times incline toward exaggeration, especially in self-defense, but Lorna Sue’s charges were essentially without substance. Prevarication comes in many shades. Mine was true-blue. I loved her. Yes, I
did
—more than anything—and she should not have left me over a couple of snow-white lies, a few embarrassing documents beneath a mattress.

Thus I sat tumbling inside myself, grieving again, full of remorse and self-hatred. My senses were temporarily impaired, and I failed to notice that the television had gone silent, that the room had mostly emptied of relatives, and that Lorna Sue’s bovine genitors were now studying me from the sofa. Velva munched on candied popcorn. Ned blinked and massaged his belly. Both parents had reached their mid-seventies, yet they seemed to have aged not at all. Bloated faces, dyed hair, pasty white skin. “All right, so get off the floor,” Ned finally muttered. “Can’t you even sit in a chair like a normal person?”

I shrugged. “Perfectly comfortable.”

“What the hell you
want
?”

“No wanting in the least,” I said. “A courtesy call. In the neighborhood, as it were.”

“And there goes the fuckin’ neighborhood,” Ned stupidly responded. (A former Jesuit, of all things. A divinity school dropout, now a foulmouthed peddler of clichés.)

Shrill laughter came from the wheelchair across the room, where Earleen sat stroking a large gray cat. The old lady wiggled her tongue at me, almost flirtatiously, then winked and kissed her cat. (I was at a loss as to what any of this might have signified. Dementia, perhaps—a household virus. More on this later.)

“Anyhow, face it,” Ned was saying. “You’re not even family no
more. Barely ever was.” He squinted at his wife. “Divorced, aren’t they? Abe and Lorna Sue?”

“They sure as heck are,” said Velva.

“Bingo,” Ned said. “Exactly what I thought.”

Mrs. Kooshof nudged me. “Who’s Abe?”

“That, I’m afraid, would be I.”

“You told me—”

“A family nickname,” I said brusquely. “Primate wordplay.”

Mrs. Kooshof grinned. “Abe! I
like
that!”

The topic wearied me. Though discomposed, I managed a pleasant sigh and then turned and inquired about Lorna Sue’s well-being.

“Fine, I guess,” said Velva. “Happy as a clam.” The woman’s articulation, never the best, was now flawed by a mouthful of candied popcorn. “Never saw her happier, not
ever
, and as long as you keep away from—”

“And her new husband? The name escapes me.”

“Yeah, sure, he’s fine too. Rich and handsome.” She swallowed and refilled. “What’s it to you?”

“Compassion,” said I.

“Com-
what
?”

“Passion, Velva. Lorna Sue and I were once locked in holy matrimony. Cuckold and wife.”

Velva stopped chewing to sort this out. She was a large, square individual, almost certainly female. “Well, okay,” she finally said, “but you never had no compassion about
none
of us. Zilch. Never even showed up for a single Christmas.”

“Untrue,” I replied. “One, I believe.”

Velva ingested another mouthful of popcorn, glared at me, then stood up and waddled out of the room. The atmosphere, I noted, had gone sour.

A few moments passed before Ned Zylstra was able to stitch together a coherent utterance.

“All right, asshole, here’s the truth,” he said: “Lorna Sue don’t want you near her, not in a trillion miles. She
told
me so. Said you’d come crawling someday, trying to worm your way back. ‘Worm’—exact
quote. And if you ever showed up here, she said, I was supposed to kick your ass to kingdom come.
That’s
where she wants you. Kingdom come.” The man sucked in a breath. (He was a smoker—Pall Malls.) “Beat it,” he said. “You and your floozy.”

Mrs. Robert Kooshof looked up with keen interest.

“Floozy?” she said.

Earleen cackled from her wheelchair. “Floozy! Jesus Christ!”

“Bingo,” said Ned.

A little vein twitched at Mrs. Robert Kooshof’s temple. To her credit, though, my companion remained poised. “Well, listen, I’ve got my problems,” she said softly, “but I don’t suppose flooziness is one of them.”

Ned began to rise, belly wobbling, but something in Mrs. Kooshof’s demeanor pressed him back into the sofa.

“Floozy,” she murmured.

At that instant our alliance was fully sealed.

“Okay, then,” Ned said, “but if I was you, I’d be real extra careful. The professor here, he’s like your jailbird husband. One more sneaky, lying, womanizing cheat. I thought maybe you’d had your fill of that with Doc.”

There was a short silence.

“Womanizing?” said Mrs. Kooshof.

“Hell, yes. He had the
names
written down. These long lists, like account books.”

Mrs. Kooshof’s eyes slid, measuring me. She rose to her feet. “With the aid of a garbage truck,” she said quietly, “I believe we can find our own way out.”

“What’s
that
supposed to mean?”

“It means,” she said, “that I feel filthy.”

Outside, Mrs. Kooshof was livid. “You cheated on her, didn’t you?”

“Cheated?”

“The ex-wife, Abe.”

“Please, that nickname,” I said. “It rubs me the wrong way.”

Mrs. Kooshof’s glance grazed my forehead and ricocheted up the street. “A word of advice, Thomas. I won’t tolerate this lying-cheating stuff.”

“I never cheated on her.”

“What then?”

“It’s complicated,” I said. “A mattress was involved.”

We strolled the half block to Mrs. Kooshof’s residence (formerly my own), stripped to the quick, ran water into her large blue bathtub, eased ourselves in, and began scrubbing off the Zylstra grime. My companion’s mood was uneasy, even sullen, but as so often happens in such liquid settings, one thing swiftly led to another. Cause and effect. Splashy. And as we locked limbs—face-to-face, more or less—I was surprised by odd stirrings of tenderness, even affection. For the moment, at least, Lorna Sue seemed an abstraction, more icon than human being. Mrs. Robert Kooshof, by way of contrast, offered the undeniable bounties of the here and now. Powerful Dutch thighs. Breasts to float a navy. Yet the surprise was not physical. The surprise was this: I was at peace. I was quietly and vastly content.