Archives for July 2013

Chapter 33

 

Ron drove up to fetch Zoe from her house about noon the next day. This time she did not come bounding out as he pulled up. He turned the car off and walked up to the door. When he rang the bell, Zoe’s mother answered.

Donna Savron was a short woman with shoulder length brown hair. She was round and full and had a sense of the voluptuous about her. She did not smile as she extended her hand towards Ron and said, “Well, it’s nice to finally get to meet you. Usually Zoe just runs out of the house. She sits here by the window and watches for your car and then she is gone. We have been wondering if there was something so strange about you that she doesn’t want to give us the chance to get a look at you.”

Ron didn’t know what to say to that. He took her hand and found it warm and dry. He looked down at it and saw traces of paint smeared on her fingers. He smiled into her face and said, “I hope that you had a good holiday.”

The woman seemed surprised at the comment and took at step back. She turned to the side so that Ron could see the room. “Come in for a few moments, Ron. I’d like you to meet my husband.”

Paul Savron was seated in an easy chair in his study. The TV was not playing. Dark framed glasses were laying closed on top of a book that was resting in his lap. Ron tried to get a look at the title. He read ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES ON BUSINESS AND SOCIETY and immediately lost interest. He stuck out his hand and said, “Ron Tuck, nice to meet you.”

Pavel looked at his hand and then up to Ron’s face. It seemed to Ron that he took his hand reluctantly and shook it. Ron thought that he had felt cold and a bit weak. “Glad to finally meet you,” said Savron.

Ron thought that both of them said that with a hint of accusation in their voices. He wondered where Zoe was. It wasn’t like her to keep him waiting like this. “What is it that you do for a living Ron?”

“I’m a teacher,” said Ron.

“Yes,” said Savron. He nodded his white haired head slowly. “In a Catholic girls’ school, isn’t that right?

“Yes,” said Ron.

“In Newark, isn’t that right?”

“Yes,” said Ron.

“Is that what you intend to do?” said Savron.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” Ron answered.

It was then that Zoe burst into the room. She did not run to Ron and put her arms around him. She stayed in the doorway smiling and nervous. She looked between her father and Ron.

“Come in Zoe,” said Savron. Ron felt like he was giving her permission to enter the room and that she had been standing there waiting for it. “Ron and I have just been getting to know each other.”

“What is it that you do Paul?” said Ron.

Ron watched as Savron absorbed the question. Then, still without answering he looked at Zoe. With his eyes still on his daughter, he said “I’m an account executive for Standard Brands.”

Ron crossed the room to Zoe and took her into his arms and kissed her. Zoe molded her body into him for the kiss and then seemed to stiffen and pull back.

“I was on the phone with Laureen,” she said. “They want us to go down there for dinner tonight.”

In the car, when they got into the corner, Zoe reached over and put her hand between his legs. She squeezed him with one hand and she waved goodbye to the house with the other. Ron could see her smiling and her sisters waving down from one of the upstairs rooms. They were waving and smiling too.

Zoe said, “I thought you handled that really well.”

“Handled what?” said Ron.

“My father,” said Zoe.

“I was only there for a few minutes,” Ron said.

“Wasn’t that enough?” she answered.

Her fingers were caressing between his legs and he was as hard as heated wood. “You better stop that or it’s gonna happen right in my pants, sad Ron. “I’m really horny.”

Zoe giggled. “I’m glad that you are. I’d be worried if you weren’t.”

“They do know that we are living together, don’t they?” said Ron.

“My mother does.”

“What about your father?”

“We haven’t talked about it.”

Ron looked at her and did not understand. “What do you mean? Where does he think that you sleep at night?”

“We haven’t talked about it,” she said again and shrugged. “I suppose my mom has told him.

When they got back to their apartment, Zoe knelt down and undid his belt, but instead of unzipping his pants, she pulled the belt from around his waist. “I want you to punish me for running away so that I learn to not do it again,” she said. The she turned on all fours unbuttoned her jeans and slid them down to her thighs and held up her bare ass for him and waited.

Ron wasn’t sure that he wanted to whip her with his belt. But there she was and she was waiting. It was what she expected of him. She folded her hands over the back of her head and said, “Please don’t hurt me too much.”

 

Chapter 32

Moths fly to the light and batter themselves against the glass that keeps them away. Flowers stay open to the sun, oblivious as to whether or not it is burning them. Ron wondered if he was like those things as he drove down the parkway. His plan was to pick up Robin and ask her if she wanted to go to Rahway for the traditional Thanksgiving gathering. He had called Zoe, but her family had not yet had dinner and she was sure that it would be at least midday on Friday before she would be able to get out of there. She was excited that he had called her at home. “I’ve been thinking about it and I know now more than ever before that I love you, Ron. I think about you all the time and I have been drawing you from memory. I know that I want to have babies with you.”

Ron blushed on the other end of the line. He did not tell her that he loved her just then. He had never told her that he loved her. He had never told her that he wanted to have babies with her. Robin had always made it clear that she didn’t want children and this had appealed to Ron. He thought that world should learn how to take care of the people that were already here before creating a bunch of new ones. He didn’t need the trophy babies to assure himself. He’d told Robin that he would call her the next day and drive up to get her.

He wanted to sit in front of the fire in the living room at Rahway and talk. He wanted to feel Robin sitting next to him and to talk to her afterwards about what people had said and get her perspective. He loved Rahway. He loved it, as much as he loved Robin, she would have said that he loved it more. But both Robin and Rahway had rejected him and there he was trying to crawl back like a dog that had been kicked away from the fire. He wanted to know what he could do so.  That he wasn’t rejected. He wanted to be who they wanted him to be so that they would love him as much as he loved them.

Sure they just would have said that he was supposed to be himself. Ron laughed out loud in the empty car at this thought. People were always telling him to be himself, except that when he was himself, they always sent him away. It occurred to Ron just then that he was probably more himself with his students than he was with anyone else. They didn’t send him away. They embraced him. They wanted more and more of him. Sometimes they wanted too much of him, like when they asked him if he ever tried LSD or Marijuana.  Ron had given them the evasive answer, “I always wanted to be in control of myself.” And part of that was true. It was what he disliked about tripping. But he didn’t feel that he lost control when he smoked pot. He felt that it helped to focus him. To bring him to that zoned in place where nothing distracted him from what was right in front of him.

“Why on earth would you possibly want to go there?” said Robin. She was looking at him with an incredulous smirk on her face. “Did they invite us to go there?”

“It’s a standing invitation,” said Ron. “Thanksgiving night at Rahway. A lot of people will just show up. Warren and Laureen expect it.”

“They aren’t expecting you and me, Ron. I guarantee you that.”

Ron felt himself slump.

“Maybe you should just go, if that’s what you really want to do.”

Ron felt that she was testing him. That phrase, “if that’s what you really want to do” was one that he’d heard before. If he said yes, she would feel that he was choosing them over her again. If he said no, she would think that he was still weak and that she could manipulate him anyway that she wanted to pull or push him. It had been a bad idea and now he was stuck with it. “I thought that maybe you’d enjoy seeing some of those people,” said Ron. “We haven’t really seen anyone since you came home. But maybe you’d rather go to a movie.”

They went to see Annie Hall. Robin had thought that a good comedy would be just the right thing. Ron had not particularly liked Woody Allen and thought that it was going to be a silly, slapstick kind of story, but he agreed. He sat there fighting back tears through almost the entire film. It was a story about Robin and him. Is this why she had wanted to go to see it? The theater was dark and crowded and she held his hand as they watched. Once she had looked at him and saw the tears rolling down his face and quickly looked away. It was sad in a silly kind of way, she thought. When the story came to the part where Woody rewrote the ending of their relationship, Robin wondered if Ron would do that with her. But he never talked about his writing anymore. It was like he had left that part of him. He was no longer the young and aspiring poet that would get up in front of crowds and read his material. Had she done that to him? Had she taken that away from him? More than likely it was all the pot that he had smoked that had done it. She wasn’t going to be blamed for that too.

Ron made sure that his face was dry by the time the houselights came up and they walked out of the movie house. “If you’d like to go to Rahway we can,” she said.

“No,” said Ron. “You were right. We didn’t have an invitation. It was an old idea.”

He was very quiet. They got into the car and waited as the de-icer cleared one of the early nighttime frosts from the windshield. He lit a cigarette. She had stopped smoking. People were lining up to see the 10 o’clock show. Ron looked at the couples and wondered if they knew that they were doomed. They didn’t kiss goodnight. They hugged.

“My father is going to take me to the airport,” she said.

“I’m sorry that I couldn’t help you,” said Ron, “but I had this commitment.”

“You don’t need to explain,” said Robin. She walked off thinking that she hated it when he got morose.

Chapter 31

Dinner was sumptuous. It began with an antipasto. There were paper thin slices of prosciutto wrapped around small pieces of fresh melon that George had ordered from Florida. There were black and green olives and a bowl of cold shrimp. There was wet mozzarella and Swiss cheese and artichoke hearts and cold red beets. But before they began to eat, Marjorie asked Reverend Cooley to say grace.

The Coolys and the Pascals had recently returned from Africa. Reverend Cooly was a tall man who was totally bald on the top of his head but sported slicked back sides with his remaining hair. He wore silver framed glasses and Ron noticed that he had very large hands when everyone bowed their heads to pray. His wife had curly hair that was kept short. Ron thought that it looked like a bird’s nest on top of her head. Reverend Cooly wore a brown and orange plaid sports jacket that looked festive in a garish sort of way. His wife, who was only introduced as Mrs. Cooly had a patient smile glued to her face and Ron noticed that it never left. He thought that it was the kind of smile that could be described as long suffering.

Dominick Pascal was a big man, which is a polite way of saying that he was obese. Ron counted three chins. His wife Sela was very thin. Dominick was wearing a blue suit with a little American flag lapel pin that Ron noticed immediately. He wished that he had an American flag shirt and that he had worn it to piss them off.

It occurred to Ron somewhere early in the meal that these people did not particularly like Marjorie and George and that they were there as an act of Christian brotherhood. It was something about the way that they pronounced “antipasto” and keep remarking on how unusual it was to start a Thanksgiving meal with such an exotic dish.

Marjorie was oblivious to it all. She wanted to know about what it was like in Africa.  “I can tell you this Marjorie, you would never get such a fine meal as this anywhere in Africa.”

Ron looked up. “Really? You were over the entire continent?”

“Quite a bit of it,” said Dominick. “Quite a bit of it over the last six years.”

“What was it like in Egypt?” said Ron.

“We were never really up North” said Dominick. “Egypt and Africa are really two different places.”

“They are?” said Ron.

Rev. Cooley said, “Mr. Pascal is speaking culturally rather than geographically, Ron.”

Ron nodded. “So except for Egypt then is it really all the same?’

“Oh no! There are widespread differences,” said Cooley.

Mrs. Cooley added, “Some of the coastal states like South Africa are truly beautiful.”

Ron shot her a glance. “Too bad about Steve Bilko then wasn’t it?”

George laughed heartily, now on his 3^rd Manhattan and said, “Now there was a really funny man. Was his name really Bilko?”

“Do you mean Phil Silvers?” said Dominick.

“Steve Bilko just had his brains beaten out for wanting the freedom to organize the true people of South Africa,” said Ron. “He was in prison and they beat him on his head until he was dead.”

“That poor man,” said Mrs. Cooley.

George reddened and drank. Marjorie got up and cleared the dishes for the next course. Ron got up to help her. In the kitchen she whispered to Ron, “Please be nice. Please do this for me.”

Ron nodded and said that he would try.

The next course featured the roasted turkey and the stuffing that Marjorie had made for the first time outside of the bird. There was a bowl of creamed pearl onions and a long dish of candied yams. There was a large bowl of yellow turnip. Then Marjorie walked out with two more bowls. One held string beans and the other was filed with broccoli. This year they were also having fresh cranberry sauce, something that Ron had never tasted before. The table filled up under the growing eyes of those seated around it. Ron could have sworn that he actually saw Dominick lick his lips. He was proud of the table that his mother and George set. George was actually an excellent carver of meat and so the turkey’s carcass was neatly stripped. Ron thought for a moment about the way that he had hacked up a bird in the past and wound up actually pulled the legs and wings off with his hands and exposed ripped out pieces that made it look as if some predator had attacked the game with its jaws and claws.

Reverend Cooley said, “Well this is a magnificent looking table.”

The guests all looked from one to the other smiling and nodding their heads. There was a respectful moment of quiet and then the murmurs of “Oh yes, I would love some of that” that came as the plates were passed around the table. As they began to settle down to their plates and eat, Cooley said, “Your mother tells me that you are a teacher, Ron.”

Ron finished chewing and swallowed and said, “This is my first year at it. I hope to be a good teacher.”

“Lord willing, I’m sure that you will be,” said Cooley. “What did you do previously?”

“I spent some time in a jail in Paterson and before that in a center for the mentally ill in Cranford,” said Ron. He was instantly sorry that he had mentioned the jail. He saw the look of pain wash across Marjorie’s face. He knew that it made her think about her long searched for, and never found, father.

“Some of our greatest minds have spent time in both of those places, Ronald. No reason to be ashamed,” said Mrs. Cooley. It caused Ron to grin.

“I don’t think that the young man meant that he was incarcerated in either of those places, Mother,” said Reverend Cooley. “I think that he was telling us that he worked there.”

Mrs. Cooley bit her lip and said, “Oh I am sorry,” and momentarily put down her knife and fork. Ron saw Marjorie glare at the woman. He wondered what his Aunt Dotty would have said if she had been here. “Please do forgive me, Ronald.”

“No offense taken, Mrs…” Ron paused and feigned a look of confusion.  “What is your first name?”

The Cooleys exchanged a look of quick tension. And the Reverend Colley said pointedly, “Mrs. Cooley’s Christian name is Gladys.”

Ron ignored the signal. “No offense taken, Gladys.”

The Cooleys exchanged the look again. George asked if anyone wanted more wine or cider. Dominick was hunched over his plate and seemed to be shoveling the food into his mouth with the precision of a back hoe. Sela Pascal picked at her food demurely, occasionally deigning to lift a half filled fork to her mouth and tentatively placing it to her lips before opening the cavity just the slightest bit to place it inside. She then chewed thoroughly and touched her napkin to her violated lips just after she swallowed.

“What do you teach, Ronald?”

“English,” said Ron.

“So you are a man of letters,” said Gladys Cooley.

“Rather than numbers, yes,” said Ron.

“What do you do for a living, Mr. Bombasco?” said Reverend Cooley.

George had a large helping of turkey in his mouth and held up his hand while he chewed, asking her to wait. Hurriedly he chewed and swallowed and then blurted, “I’m a printer.”

“What is it that your company prints, George?” said Dominick, raising his head up for the first time, his face grown red and his cheeks swollen from exertion.

“Local papers and the Foodtown circular,” said George, happy to be on firm footing. He did a man’s job and he did it well. It was a time honored profession. He didn’t spend his time in bars with games or in classrooms with little girls.

“What do you do, Dominick?” said Ron.

“Sela and I have dedicated ourselves to spreading the word of God.”

Ron nodded. “Does it pay well?”

An electric look of tension passed around the table at the impudence of the question. Reverend Cooley spoke. “The rewards are manifest, Ronald.”

Ron had just done some reading about the ways that Missionaries had helped to rape Hawaii. He knew that his mother had wanted to be a missionary when she was young.  He also knew that for her it had been a deep and sincere desire to make the world like the world she envisioned that Jesus would have wanted.

“How do you do that in 1977?” said Ron. He shrugged. “I mean, I imagine that everyone has heard about it by now.”

“Many are they that listen and do not hear,” pronounced Cooley.

People were now reaching out for additional food, all except for Sela whose plate was still more than half full. Ron took additional dressing and ladled some of the surprisingly good fresh cranberry sauce onto his plate. Marjorie took additional candied yams. Dominick went for a refill of everything. Even the Cooleys took more turkey and potatoes.

“What I mean is,” said Ron, “what exactly do you do?”

“Well, with all of the European countries giving up and all this talk of individual States and Countries, there is a movement back to old heathen ways in Africa and we try to combat that.”

“And how do you do that?” said Ron. He found himself now genuinely interested.

“For one, we work on old legends and songs, the things that these people believe because they really don’t know any better. We sometimes take the melodies of old songs and rewrite the stories, providing an enlightened look at the world.”

“You change their history?” said Ron.

“They really don’t know too much about history, Ronald.”

“How do you know that?”

Cooley seemed to ignore the question. “They have folk songs and tales that they tell each other. And we inject the Divine presence into them.”

Ron put down his fork. “So basically you steal their history the same way that slave owners stole the language of African slaves in America.”

“We don’t think of it as stealing, more that we are giving them gifts.”

“Suppose they don’t want your gifts?”

“We also provide food and clothing and medicine.”

“Well, that’s good,” said Ron. “Do they get the medicine if they don’t sing the songs the way that you want them to?”

“Marjorie, I must say that this is the most delicious meal that we have had since returning home,” said Gladys Cooley.

After the pies and the coffee and the fruit and the nuts, the men went to watch a football game and the women congregated in the kitchen.

Ron saw that the Miami Dolphins were drubbing the St Louis Cardinals. He had always rooted for the Cardinals because he liked their quarterback, but Miami was just too good and the game was not competitive.

Football didn’t live in him the way that it used to. He knew that he would never play again, not even in a game of two-handed touch. The men were sprawled with their bellies sticking up like large amphibious creatures sunning themselves in front of the light of the TV instead of being on some rocks watching the sea roll in.

He looked to the kitchen. There was a constant clatter of pots, pans and dishes as the women honored a time old custom of not leaving each other with a mess to clean. Ron would have preferred being in there, but he knew that his presence would ruin Marjorie’s being the center of attention. They would all feel compelled to make a fuss over him being there,

or in the cases of these other two women perhaps express their discomfort with him not acting like one of the men.

Chapter 30

 

Of all the holidays on the calendar Thanksgiving was his favorite. It

was the only one that had not been tainted over the years by his changing beliefs.  He had lost his feel for Christmas and Easter when he had started to question his Christianity. The Viet Nam war had cost him the 4^th of July. He had never really loved Halloween or New Years. As far as Ron was concerned the year began in September anyway. Summer was the conclusion of the year. But Thanksgiving had always remained.

He liked the idea of being thankful. He loved the feast. He loved the football games. He loved the way that Marjorie had always respected the spirit of the holiday by inviting people to their house who had nowhere else to go. Aunt Dotty had taught him that Thanksgiving was a holiday that began in Massachusetts and that it always reminded her that she was actually a New England woman by birth.

That Thursday morning he showered and dressed happily. He wanted to call his father and wish him a good holiday, but that was another casualty of Viet Nam. When he started spouting his radical politics and Ron’s half brother and sister had begun to listen to his thoughts, Ron’s father had told him that he wasn’t welcome there anymore. That was the last real conversation that he and his Dad had. That had been over five years now.
“Happy Thanksgiving, Ronald,” said his mother. They kissed quickly. She had started setting the holiday table which started in the dining room and stretched into their living room. George was galloping around the house setting up a bar. He looked excited but glum. “I don’t know who you think is going to drink all that alcohol,” said Marjorie.

George stopped what he was doing. “It’s a holiday. People are allowed to have a drink on the holiday, Marge.”

“I don’t see why they need to,” said Marjorie. She curled her lips and crinkled her nose and shook her head slightly as if she was throwing off a bad odor.

“Who all is coming?” said Ron.

“Reverend Cooly and his wife and Reverend Pascal and his friend,” said Marjorie happily. “And of course your Aunt Mina. I asked the tenants upstairs, but they have someplace to go.”

“Yeah,” said George. “She wanted to take out an ad in the paper but the town already has a soup kitchen.”

“Maybe you should start drinking now,” said Marjorie. “At least then you’ll be able to talk when the company gets here.”

George shook his head. “What would I say to these people?”

“Of course, if it’s not about cards, or booze, or crime, or the price of vegetables, what would you have to contribute? Why do you think I depend on Ronald so much? At least he knows how to carry on a conversation.”

Ron tried to change the mood. “If they are anything like the nuns in the convent George, they’ll go through quite a few bottles of everything.”

George laughed and returned to his preparations.

Marjorie straightened and put her hand on her hip and gave Ron a look of betrayal. “They aren’t Catholics who live all shut away from everything,” she said. She paused and looked over at George and then back at Ron. “Can we please just have a nice dinner? Is that really too much to ask from the both of you?”

Ron moved into the kitchen. The aromas were outstanding.  The roasting turkey filled the house and the oven made everything so warm that George had opened the windows. Ron loved having the windows open in a warm room on a cold day. It was extravagant but the feel of the breeze reminded him of warm weather. Chipper came over and wagged his tail and Ron crouched down to pet him. “I’m gonna take the dog for a walk,” he said.

He leashed Chipper and they went out the back door and through the aluminum gate and down the street. Chipper never got taken for a walk unless Ron was there and the excitement of new smells and freedom gave him a prance to his step. They walked across Bloomfield Avenue and down to the glen, where Ron took the leash off and let Chipper roam. It was their secret that he did this. George would have been horrified that he was going to get into trouble for having a dog off of a leash and Marjorie would have been worried that he was going to run away and get hit by a car again.

Ron talked to the dog as they walked. “It doesn’t seem the same now that Aunt Dottie is gone, does it Chip?”

The dog stopped at the mention of her name. He raised his head and looked around for a few sad seconds and not seeing her, returned to his olfactory cornucopia. Ron smiled and then felt the dried leaves crunch under his feet like the spirits of the dead.

He wondered if there was an afterlife. The resounding no in his brain was painful. It was so much easier to think of his aunt and his grandmother someplace happy and beyond pain. He wondered if that was where the idea of a heaven came from. There had to be some reward for being good. Otherwise, why didn’t people just spend their lives doing what they wanted to do? Wasn’t that the whole purpose of hell, to keep people in line? It wasn’t enough to say that a person would live on in the hearts of others. What kind of real comfort was that if there was nothing about it which a person could actually enjoy? They reached the end of the Glen and Ron leashed Chipper and started back across the street.

Ron held the leash so that it just slacked slightly across the dog’s back, just enough for him to keep his pace and not feel the jerk of confinement. He loved Chipper. It was true that George had announced that it was his dog and then failed to housebreak him and slapped him in the mouth far too many times, so that Chipper had developed that self defensive urge to bite. But the one time that he had bitten Ron, he had with some strange instinct,  crouched down on the floor and held his hand up to Chipper’s mouth and said pleadingly, “no.” That formed a strong pact. Chipper never bit him again and Ron never ever slapped the dog. They turned up the asphalt driveway and through the metal gate and the leash was off, Chipper romped for a few seconds and then came wagging up the backstairs and into the house.

Glimpsing down through the lower windows into the basement and flashed on how he had stayed down there with Chipper when George had taken to chaining the dog there because he could not stop him from urinating in the house. Ron would ask each night if Chipper was allowed out of the basement and George would say, “Not tonight.”  Ron would nod and take his plate from the table and walk downstairs to share his dinner with the dag and sit by him. This move, of course, had driven Marjorie totally insane and she would peck at George about her son eating in the basement until George would inevitably throw up his hands and say, “Do whatever you want.” They moved passed the pantry and up into the kitchen where Ron saw his father, sitting with Marjorie and George, having a holiday drink.

“Hello, Ronald,” said his father with slick gentleness that did not withhold a hint of judgment.

Ron looked up and saw at once that his mother looked younger and sat with a fresh glass of cider in front of her and seems to be glowing. George was sitting back. Ron was not sure what George was seeing.”Hello Dad.”

Ron felt like he was instantly transported back to the age of fourteen or even younger, back to that time in his life when he worshipped his father and everything that his father did. His dad was now sitting in front of a cut crystal glass into which George had poured two fingers of Scotch over two ice cubes. He had also made himself one.

 

“Come and sit at the table, Ronald,” said Marjorie. Ron felt himself moving and sitting. Chipper followed and sat by his side with a look of moral support. “Now, it’s time for the two of you to stop your foolishness and just make up,” said Marjorie.

Now the heat in the room was making Ron sweat, but he resented the way that his mother had put him on the spot and with of all people, his father. “What would you like us to make up, Mom?”

“There’s no reason to be shitty,” said Marjorie.

Ron met his father’s blue eyes with a steady look from his own hazel eyes. He felt the fluttering inside that he always felt when he looked at his father. “It’s good to see you Dad. I hope everything is going well.”

“I hear that you have a job teaching,” said Harry. And then unable to help himself, added “So I guess that you finally finished school.”

Ron eyes flashed a look of defiance. “I may go back. You can never learn enough, you know.”

Harry turned to Marjorie, “Twenty-five years old and still in school.”

And then his eyes panned back to Ron. “You can’t learn everything from books, Ronald.”

“Thanks Dad.”

“Now the two of you just stop it right now.” Marjorie could see her plan swirling around the toilet bowl and just about ready to be flushed.

“How are Carol and Tim?” said Ron, referencing the two children that his father had from his second marriage, the two children that Ron had been told to stay away from.

“They are great. Timmy is playing basketball at Bloomfield High School and Carol graduated from East Orange Catholic last year and is learning to be a lab technician.”

Ron smiled. “That’s great Dad. Tell them that I said, hello.” Ron stopped himself before he added something about unless you think it’s too dangerous for them to hear my name mentioned.

“Why don’t you tell then yourself?” said Harry.

“And just how am I supposed to do that, Dad?”

“You’re welcome at the house anytime.”

“Since when?” said Ron.

“I never said that you couldn’t come there, Ron. I said that I didn’t want you filling their heads with your crazy ideas.” Ron knew that was a lie but it didn’t matter to him.

“Yeah, I know. Thinking that the war was a tragedy and that Nixon was a monster were really crazy ideas. Almost as crazy as thinking that black people were people, huh Dad?”

“Do the two of you always have to be like this?” said Marjorie with desperation in her voice. She looked at Ron and pleaded with her eyes, tried to reach that place where he knew how important this was to her. Bur Ron was unreachable now. He and his father were locked into each other with a gaze that was unbreakable.

“If you had seen the things that I have seen, Ronald, you would understand why I feel the way that I do.”

Ron knew that his father was in and out of some of the seediest bars in Newark New Jersey, a city whose very name struck fear into the minds of some suburban people. He had to admit, he had not seen the things that his father had seen. “Poverty and discrimination make people do very strange things Dad. It’s not like everything became great when the Civil War was over, you know?”

“I’m not one of your students, Ron.” said his father with a steely timbre in his voice.

“No Dad, my students are mostly Black and Hispanic.”

“Bunch of animals,” said George, trying to show solidarity with Harry.

Anger flashed across Ron’s face.  “You know what I have found George? The Hispanic families are very much like the Italian ones. They love their culture. They take care of their kids. They resent anyone who is not the same as they are and they like loud meals. And to top it all off they are Catholic.”

George reddened. To his way of thinking he had just been called a spic. Harry could see this wasn’t going the way that Marjorie had said that it would. “Well I guess that I better get going. Ronald, you are welcome to come over whenever you want. Carol and Tim would love to see you.”

“Really?” said Ron. “Where do they think I’ve been?’

Harry didn’t answer but stood and put on his coat. Marjorie automatically stood up to. So did George. Ron sat there. He really didn’t want his father to go, but what could he do about it now?

Marjorie walked Harry to the door and when she came back her face was set into a hard mask. She walked into the kitchen where Ron was petting Chipper and waiting for what he knew was coming. “Why are you such a bastard?”

Ron didn’t answer.

“Your father is a proud man. Do you think that it was easy for him to come here and apologize to you?”

“Did I miss the apology?”

“Him coming here was an apology. He knows that he’s made some mistakes. But he is a good man and he is your father!”

“Makes you wonder about nature and nurture doesn’t it?”

“I’m not as smart as you are, you little bastard, so I guess I’m going to have to ask you to explain that to me.”

“What it means is, Mom, can you imagine what it would have been like if he had stuck around to raise me?”

Marjorie was taken aback. That was not what she had expected him to say. Harry would have been very hard on Ron and she knew how free he was with his hands. She regretted a lot of things about her failed marriage with Harry, but seeing Ron and then trying to imagine how he would have turned out with even more of Harry’s influence on him was not one of them, even if he did need a good clout in the head once in a while. She knew that Harry would have been jealous of his brain.

Chapter 29

Ron woke up and saw that there were still two and half joints left in the ashtray. Maybe he was slipping. The dream left him troubled as it always did. He made coffee and kept seeing glimpses of the floor in his head.

His phone was ringing.

“Ronald, this is your mother.”

For a moment Ron was stunned. Had they found the body? Is that why she was calling? “Hi mom,” he said almost shakily.

“Why aren’t you working?”

“They gave us the half day off.”

“I just had an interesting phone call. It was Robin. It seems that she thinks that you are living here.”

A new fear gripped Ron.  “What did you tell her?”

“I didn’t tell her anything. Just that you weren’t here.”

“That’s good,” sighed Ron.

“I really don’t want to see you mixed up with that girl again, Ronald. She isn’t any good for you.”

“I know Mom.”

“And I really don’t want to be involved in your lies.”

“I know Mom.”

“Your father was a liar and I thought that I had taught you better than that.”

“You did Mom.”

“Well it doesn’t really seem that I did. Anyway, she asked that you call her.”

“OK.”

“Are you going to call her?”

“Yes,” he said quietly.

“Why? she said. “So that she can break your heart again?”

“No Mom,” he said with a slight tone of exasperation creeping into his voice.

“I always thought that you were so smart. Why do you have to be so stupid about this?”

Ron didn’t say anything.

She went on. “But I suppose you are going to do whatever you want to do. You always have. You won’t care how it hurts me or anyone else to see you the way that she makes you.” Ron felt his head hang and he began pacing as he listened to her.  “Well, I don’t suppose that there is any chance that you would have the time to take your mother to the cemetery today.”

“I really had plans, Mom.”

“What, to mope around your apartment and sulk about Robin?”

Then a new thought seemed to strike her. “Where’s the other girl? The little mousey one.”

“She isn’t mousey.”

“When she squints through those glasses she is mousey.”

“She’s with her parents for the holiday. If you really need me to take you to the graves…” his voice trailed off.

“Oh no, I’m not about to beg you to go and see your grandmother and my mother and Uncle Mike and the Aunt that you professed to have so much love for.” She paused and then said. “How many times have you visited your Aunt’s grave?”

“I don’t know Mom.”

“When was the last time that you were there?”

“I don’t remember”

“Such a fine memory and he can’t remember the last time he went to the cemetery. I suppose it will be the same way with me, won’t it? You’ll never visit my grave”

Ron had had enough and then he said out of nowhere, “Do you think that there’s a body buried in the basement?”

“What!” he voice was incredulous. “What kind of a thing is that to say to a person?  Do I think there’s a body buried in the basement? George will you listen to this?” she called out. “Ronald wants to know if we have a body buried in the basement.”

“Go and do whatever things that you have to do Ronald. What time will you be here tomorrow?”

“Whatever time you want me there, Mom.”

“You’re not bringing Robin are you?”

“No, Mom I’m not.”

When he hung up the phone, he called Robin immediately. She answered on the second ring.

“It’s Ron, my mom said that you called.”

“Yes, she was surely happy to hear my voice.”

Ron didn’t answer for a long time. “You know how our parents are. None of them, with the exception of my father, seems to like the one of us for the other.”

“That’s not really true Ron. My mom likes you very much.”

“Anyway,” said Ron. “What’s up?”

“Are you still mad about last night?”

“I wasn’t mad,” he said. “I was hurt. Why do you always think that I’m mad when you’ve hurt me?”

“I don’t want to argue, Ron. I called to tell you that I’m going back on Saturday and I was wondering if you could take me to the air

port?”

“I don’t think I can. I have something that I promised to do with a friend.”

She was silent. She was not at all used to Ron saying no to her. Then she said, “We’re even going to lose our friendship because I won’t fuck you aren’t we?”

For the first time in Ron could not remember how long, he felt himself seething with anger at Robin. His had gripped the phone tightly.  “Yeah Robin, fucking you is what I’m all about.”

“I didn’t say that. But the truth is Ron, that if I were fucking you, you wouldn’t be mad at all.”

Ron’s voice with almost a hiss when he spoke.  “I asked you to marry me last night and we haven’t made love in years now. And you still think that it’s all about me sleeping with you? It doesn’t matter what I say or do for you. You still think it’s all about that.”

Robin seemed to recoil on the phone. Ron could sense the look on her face. He could see the way that her jaw line squared. He could see the way that her forehead furrowed. He could sense the way she tilted her head so that he blond hair hung down over her face. “If it’s going to be like this, we shouldn’t see each other anymore.”

Ron caught himself before he uttered the word “fine.” He kept it locked inside of his brain. “Do you want me to drive down and pick you up?”

“Not if we are going to fight.”

“We won’t fight,” he said.

“Then I would love to see you,” she answered.

Ron drove down the parkway wondering why it was that he found himself so helpless around her. Was it because that she was the first woman that he really had loved? Was it because she was the first woman that really had hurt him? In fact she had devastated him. He had needed to have people put him back together and in some ways he felt that he would never be the same. He thought about a Fitzgerald essay. Was he like “a cracked plate” that had been glued back together and which people would never really trust because it could always fall apart? Was he so damaged that he would never again feel really whole? Was it like his knees? He remembered lying in the hospital bed after that first surgery and realizing that he would never be the same again. Was this like that? Were affairs of the heart very much like what happened to damaged limbs? They could be put back together but they would never have that “full throated ease” or feel that unrestrained joy again.

He reached her mother’s apartment and stood at the door. He needed answers to these questions but he was pretty sure that the answers were not going to come from a conversation with Robin. They didn’t have those tender conversations any more. It was then that the realization hit him that he could not rely on her.

When she opened the door she put her arms around his neck and kissed him. It was a lover’s kiss. She molded her body to him and he swore that he could feel her hips moving against him. She said, “I didn’t think that you’d come.”

Ron felt like a dog who had been given a treat. He wondered if he should wag his tail in the hopes of another. Robin felt his immediate reaction when she pressed against him. Feeling his hardness, she was reassured.