Vexation Lullaby (24 page)

Mike wears Hawaiian shirts, never takes off his sunglasses, and he addresses strangers as “Bud-O.” He's a Jimmy Buffett fan.

W
HEN I TELL
Rosalyn she's welcome to join me, she tilts her head toward a small roller bag waiting by the back door. She'd packed the night before.

“I'm not usually an impulsive person,” she says.

Since the Corolla was sort of my bachelor pad, I ask Rosalyn if I should vacuum it first. She says, “In for a penny, in for a pound.”
³⁷

I move my executive organizer into the back and stow her bag.

As we buckle in, I feel a twinge of dread. What if the adventure I can offer isn't what she's seeking? The nicest thing about traveling alone is not having to worry about witnesses. “Here we go,” I say, as much for my benefit as for hers.

She reaches over and cups the back of my skull. “Thank you, Arthur.”

“Don't thank me yet.”

I drive.

B
ILLBOARDS LORDED OVER
empty fields, advertising mortgage refinancing and worship services. America, like a tree's canopy or a balloon, is a thing composed mostly of nothing. We sail along.

“Do whatever you usually do,” Rosalyn says. “Pretend I'm not here.”

I reach behind my seat and fish out my collection of books on tape.
³⁸
I'd been listening to a Ken Follett for the second or third time, but it seemed impolite to ask Rosalyn to pick up halfway through a book. I pop in
Pride and Prejudice
, a book I've always intended to read, but never gotten around to—Gabby gave it to me years ago.

A guy announces that we're about to hear some famous actress read Jane Austen's “classic novel of manners.” Then the woman begins, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” Rosalyn reaches over and pokes me in the arm.

“I assure you, I don't have a good fortune.”

I can't pay attention to the book—my mind is clouded with feeling. There's the irony that on the best night of the tour—maybe the best show in a decade—I spent a third of the time indisposed. There's the fact that my daughter, it appears, is poised to embark on her own remarkable journey—Patricia sort of tipped her hand when she called. If Gabby asks me to give her away, it won't mean that everything is okay between us; and if she doesn't want me to give her away, then I'll have to pretend that doesn't hurt (it would hurt).

Rosalyn swings her head left and right, as though she expects to see a sign from God.

And then a sign appears before us: Ohio Welcomes You.

50

In Peter's mind, Columbus was four-story redbrick halls, a football stadium, and a marching band. Craning his neck, he found himself surrounded by glass-skinned office towers. Where had they come from?

Instead of getting tangled up with that question, he called Martin and told him about Cross's accident.

“Please tell me you've scanned him.”

“We're negotiating.”

“This isn't negotiable. You're in Columbus; their medical center just picked up a new Siemens machine. I'll call the head of imaging and have him meet you there.”

Peter knew all of this; he'd called Martin for reinforcement. “I'll go find Cross.”

“Find him? Don't tell me you let him walk off, a guy who'd reported cognitive lapses, a guy who recently fell down a flight of stairs.”

An image played in Peter's mind: Cross sprawled on the damp cement of the hotel's garage, drumming his heels between the parked cars, and when Peter pried open the singer's eyelids, staring up, two empty black pupils.

“I'll take care of this.”

“Hear me out, Peter. All you're asking is for him to lie still in a bed. Too bad if he doesn't like it. It's his fault he's got a doctor tagging along. If he tries to stonewall us, we'll make him sign a release so cold-blooded he'll beg you to pack him in bubble wrap. Cooper would love to put something like that together, as payback for that Perry Mason stunt.”

At their core, hospitals had more in common with a police station than with a university. To a hospital, health wasn't an ideal to be pursued, but a law to be enforced. If Peter wasn't the bully, he was the bully's flunky.

“I can't scare him into a hospital,” Peter said. “He isn't some guy with a couple college-age kids and a second mortgage.”

“In the end, it doesn't matter if you scare him or seduce him or trick him. What matters is that you examine him.” Martin said, “Wait until his generation dies off. Medicine is going to get much easier.”

At least Cross's generation didn't show up for their appointments with printouts from WebMD, with questions compiled by the know-it-alls at the Mayo Clinic. Peter's older patients never asked to consult with homeopaths or herbalists or Reiki healers. They didn't expect him to forward their X-rays to their phones or ask Peter to wait while they completed a text message. His older patients never invited him to “join” them on LinkedIn.

“You're not going to want to hear this,” Martin said, “but you really ought to call Ogata. If he hears about Cross's fall from someone else, it's going to look bad. Remember, Ogata and Cross have a relationship. You can exploit that.”

“I don't want to
exploit
anything.”

“Lighten up on the semantics. Am I talking about child labor? No, I'm talking about basic preventative care. Stop stalling and do what you'd do if you were here.”

Peter's phone felt like a brick in his hand. He sat down on a cement bench, caught his breath, and dialed Ogata's number.

He expected to be intercepted by a secretary or transferred to a mailbox. Instead, a cheery, up-speaking voice asked Peter a question: “Are you
well
?”

Peter identified himself. “I'm trying to reach Dr. Ogata.”

“And you've reached him, but are you well?”

Leaning forward, Peter pinched his eyes closed. “I'm okay.”

“And how's our friend?”

Taciturn. Slippery. Guarded. Probably not a friend. “He tripped coming off the jet last night. He claims Alistair broke his fall, but he wound up with a decent lump on the side of his head. I want to scan him, but he's not taking my concerns very seriously.”

“You sure Allie didn't push him?”

“I wasn't there.”

“I was making a small joke.”

Did Ogata realize Peter didn't have the freedom to joke?

Ogata continued, “Do you know the first rule of parenting?”

Peter heard people walking past, but he kept his eyes shut. “I don't have kids.”

“It doesn't matter. Anyway, Show up is the first rule. The second is Shut up and listen. If a parent follows both rules she'll look like a genius. The reason I bring it up, they're also great guidelines for patient care.
Show up
, then
shut up and listen.
”

“Not to sound unappreciative, but I didn't call looking for advice about medicine. I was hoping you could help me deal with your friend.”

When he responded, Ogata spoke from a lower register. “I just offered you everything I know about how to look after a patient.”

Peter was tired of stroking everyone's ego. He was tired. “I need to get him into the hospital. Neither one of us is going to look very good if something happens to him while he's under the care of the Rochester Memorial/Tony Ogata Ambassador for Wellness.”

“Is that actually your title?”

“That's what they're calling me.”

“I don't recall signing off on that.” The tenor of the conversation had changed somehow. “Besides the fall, have there been any other problems?”

“This morning he called his television ‘the spoon.'”

“Fuck me,” Ogata said. “Where is he now?”

Peter opened his eyes. He was staring at a round trash can tiled with small river stones. “We're in Columbus, Ohio.”

“
Show up
, then
shut up and listen
.”

“Please, no more maxims.”

“You've got more power than you know.”

Peter wasn't talking with Ogata. He was listening to a recording.

51

Rosalyn doesn't have any patience for Jane Austen. She wants to hear my story. It turns out I have a story. Rosalyn's amazed that I've cruised on the Yellow River, spent a night in a
favela
in Rio, been detained by the Berlin
Polizie
after they mistook me for a vagrant. When I tell her about the time a pack of coyotes took shelter beneath my truck—I miss the image a truck projects—she sees evidence that I live in harmony with nature (in
The
Holy Screw
, a pack of dolphins join Ruben when he goes for a swim in the Mediterranean). I tell her that I once got lost outside Milan and woke up in an orchard of blossoming lemon trees, and Rosalyn makes me touch the goose bumps on her arms.

“I can't believe Mindy never mentioned you before.”

I say, “I guess she wanted to keep me to herself.” I'm not joking—I'm flirting.

Rosalyn traps her skirt against her legs, then she lifts her toes to the dash and wiggles them. “I almost moved to India to be with a man.”

“When was this?”

She accuses me of trying to determine her age.

Because I'd met her with Mindy, I'd assumed we were contemporaries, but I realize the flaw in my logic. “I don't care how old you are now, but how old were you ten years ago?”

Rosalyn laughs.

“Tell me a secret.”

“I used to ride a motorcycle.”

I glance over to see if she's lying.

“A different man. We rode around Los Angeles in leather pants. It was exciting until I discovered he was married.”

I tell Rosalyn I used to be married.

“What do you miss about it?”

“What makes you think I miss anything?”

She rolls her window down, sticks her head out the window,
and spits. When the window closes, she says, “You must have misse
d something.”

“We always did laundry on Sundays. I liked folding our clothes, the three piles—my stuff, Patricia's smaller things, and, finally, our daughter Gabby's tiny things. I liked putting everything away.”

“That's a much better answer.”

“I haven't thought about that in a long time.”

“We contain multitudes, Arthur.”

Rosalyn has put her finger on the problem with the book I want to write. How can one book ever contain Cross's multitudes? The performer I followed in '90 is not the same man I followed in '97 or in '03 or today. How can I convey Cross's central enigma: that he is an ever-evolving musician who never abandons the past or stops looking toward the future (imagine, for example, his Tex-Mex band playing a rockabilly version of a folk song he wrote fifty years ago).

I tell Rosalyn a story. On June 4, 2004, Cross delivered a somnambulant performance at Sacramento's Memorial Auditorium. For two dreary hours he shuffled through B-sides, silenced applause with feedback, and turned his back on the audience. It took him most of the show to earn the crowd's antipathy, but after he'd turned us against him he played the most sublime rendition of “Proud Beatrice.” When the houselights came up, the crowd poured into the streets wearing red-rimmed eyes like badges of honor. I wanted to get some water, so I ducked into the first bodega I came to. Inside I find Cross; he's staring into a cardboard box of green mangoes. He still had on the yellow shirt he'd worn on stage. Though the place was crowded with people who'd come from the show, nobody recognized him, not the other shoppers nor the clerk, whose attention kept darting to the front door as if anticipating a holdup.

“And it really was him?” Rosalyn asks.

“Sometimes I tell myself I'd see him everywhere, if I could train myself to recognize his different forms.”

In the distance, Columbus rises from the earth. It's just a city, yes, but it's a city named after a man who discovered a new world where he'd expected to find the old world. Could a similar miracle happen to me? Might I find a new Arthur Pennyman where I expect the old Arthur Pennyman to be?

Rosalyn says, “I've had a rough few months.”

I place my hand on hers.

“I was diagnosed with stage 2 ovarian cancer.”

“You'll be okay.”

She takes a deep breath. Lets it out. “Well, right now, I'm sick. And neither of us can see the future.”

•••

High above, turkey vultures sail on invisible thermals. The road we're on is as straight as intention. A tongue of green reveals where groundwater seeps across a brown field.

I say, “My daughter is engaged to someone I haven't even met.”

Rosalyn turns to me, “Oh, happiness.”

52

With Ogata's voice still echoing in his head, Peter called Judith. Lucy was right—he was a mama's boy to his core.

“Do you have a moment?” It was almost a joke—she was a self-employed jeweler.

“Actually,” she said, “I am a little busy. I may have had a breakthrough.”

He could hear a disquieting excitement in her voice. “A breakthrough?”

“I'd been thinking about scarabs. They're hot again. . . . well, really, insects in general. I wanted to do my own take on them, but I don't like bugs. Then I noticed the wheat heads in the yard. When I cast them, they looked like a cross between an ear of corn and a caterpillar. I brought a dozen pendants to the farmers' market and they sold out in an hour.”

“Do you think you'll make more?” He wanted to keep her talking. Her voice calmed him.

“That's just it—one of the buyers owns a yoga catalog. He asked if I had a distributor. I guess he thinks he can sell them. It could be real money. There's a guy in Oregon who's sold eight thousand scented river stones.”