The Land of Laughs (28 page)

“Anyway, what I’ve been thinking of is this, if it’s all right with you. If I could have it my way right now, I’d have you go away for a while. Until I finish this draft and get through whatever is going on between Anna and me.”

She smirked and dropped the dish towel on the table. “And what happens if you don’t ‘get through’ with Anna? Huh? What then, Thomas?”

“You’re right, Sax. I honestly don’t know what then. The only thing that I’m sure of is that this way stinks. Nobody likes what’s going on now, and all of the hurt and worry and confusion is totally fucking everybody up. I know that it’s my fault. I know it, but it’s something that has to happen, or else …” I picked up the towel and wrapped it around my fist. It was still damp.

“Or else what?
What
has to happen — writing your book or going to bed with Anna?”

“Yes, all right, both. Both have to happen if —”

She stood up. She picked up a small block of celery and popped it into her mouth. “You want me to go away so that you can finish your draft and supposedly get through your ‘thing’ with Anna. That’s what you want, right? Okay. I’ll go, Thomas. I’ll go up to St. Louis and I’ll wait there for three months. You’ll have to give me some money, because I don’t have any left. But after those three months, I’m going to leave. Whether you’re there or not, I’ll be leaving.” She started out of the room. “I owe you that much, but you’ve been a shit about all of this, Thomas. I’m just glad that you could finally make up your mind about something.”

The day she left, it snowed. I woke up about seven and groggily looked out the window. The sun hadn’t risen yet, but it had grown light enough to paint everything outside blue-gray. When I realized what was going on, I didn’t know if I was happy or sad that we might be snowed in and Saxony wouldn’t be able to leave. I stumbled over to the window for a better look and saw how high it had drifted up on the porch. It was still falling, but the flakes were big and slow and falling vertically, and I remembered somewhere that that meant it would stop soon. The house hadn’t betrayed the snow’s secret yet — the floors were warm under my bare feet, and although I wore only a pajama top and underpants, I wasn’t cold.

Snow. My father hated it. He once had to make a movie in Switzerland in the winter, and he never got over the shock. He liked warm tropical places. The swimming pool in our backyard was heated to about three hundred degrees for him. His idea of heaven was heat stroke in the Amazon jungle.

Saxony was only taking one suitcase this time; all of her other things — the notes, the marionettes, and her books — were being left with me in Galen. She wouldn’t tell me what she planned on doing in St. Louis, but I was worried because she hadn’t packed any of her puppets or her tools. Her bag was on the floor near the window. I went over and pushed it a couple of inches with my bare foot. What would be happening in three months? Where would I be? The book? Everything? No, not everything — the Galeners would be in Galen, and so would Anna.

Saxony was still sleeping when I sneaked my clothes off a chair and tiptoed into the bathroom to get dressed. I wanted to make a really nice going-away breakfast for her, so I’d gotten a fat Florida grapefruit for the occasion.

Sausage, scrambled eggs with sour cream, fresh whole-wheat bread, and a grapefruit. I got them all out of the refrigerator and lined them up like soldiers on the Formica counter. Sax’s breakfast. By noon she would probably be gone. No more hairs in the sink, no more fights about Anna, no more Rocky and Bullwinkle on television at four in the afternoon. Christ, enough of that. I started to work on the meal like the mad chef, because I was already starting to miss her and she wasn’t even out of bed. When she came into the kitchen, she was wearing the same clothes that she’d worn the first day we met. I ended up burning three sausages.

She asked if I would call the bus station and find out if the bus to St. Louis was still running in the snow. I called on the phone in the downstairs hall. I gazed at the snow through the half-window in the front door. The flakes had stopped.

“The snow’s stopped!”

“I see from here. Aren’t you delighted?”

I grimaced and tapped my foot.

“Galen Bus.”

“Hi, yes, uh, I’d like to know if your nine-twenty-eight to St. Louis will still be going today?”

“Why wouldn’t it?” Whoever it was sounded like a cigar-store Indian.

“Well, you know, the snow and everything.”

“He’s got chains on it. That bus don’t stop running for nothin’, friend. Sometimes he’s late, but he doesn’t stop running.”

Saxony came out into the hall with half a grapefruit in one hand and a spoon in the other. I put my hand over the mouthpiece and told her that it was going. She walked to the front door and looked at the snow.

I hung up and couldn’t decide whether to go back into the kitchen or go to her and see what she would do. I chickened out and went back to the kitchen.

My eggs were still warm, so I scooped some sour cream onto the side of my plate and ate quickly.

“Sax, aren’t you going to finish your breakfast? That’s a long bus ride to St. Louis.”

When she didn’t answer, I thought it best just to leave her alone. While I ate, I envisioned her eating her grapefruit at the front door, watching the snow end.

I had finished my second cup of coffee when I started to get a little nervous about her. Her plate was filled with food and her teacup was up to the top.

“Sax?”

I threw my napkin on the table and got up. She wasn’t in the hall, and neither was her coat or her suitcase. She had left the hollowed-out grapefruit rind and spoon on the radiator near the door. I unhooked my coat from the rack and moved toward the door. The phone rang. I cursed and snatched it up.

“Yeah? What?”

“Thomas?” It was Anna.

“Look, Anna, I can’t talk to you now, okay? Saxony just left, and I’ve got to catch her before she’s gone.”

“What? Don’t be ridiculous, Thomas. Obviously if she left without telling you, she doesn’t want you with her. Leave her alone. She doesn’t want to say good-bye to you. You can understand that.”

That made me mad. I had had enough of Anna’s gems of wisdom, and there were things that I wanted to say to Saxony before she took off. I told Anna that I would call her later and hung up.

The cold sucked away all the heat from my body before I had left the porch, and my teeth were chattering as I went through the front gate. A car went slowly by, its chains ka-chunking and throwing snow out from beneath the wheel wells. I knew that the bus didn’t leave for another hour, but I started running anyway. I had on heavy insulated work boots that the man in the shoe store had guaranteed against frostbite down to thirty degrees below zero. But running in them was a slow-motion jog. I didn’t have my gloves, either, so I ran with my hands stuffed into my pockets; I didn’t have my wool hat, so my ears and even my cheeks began to ache.

When I finally saw her, I stopped running. I didnt know what I wanted to say, but I had to say something to her before she left.

She must have heard me coming, because she turned and faced me just as I was about to catch up with her. “I wish you hadn’t, Thomas.”

I was out of breath, and my eyes were watering from the cold. “But why did you just go off like that, Sax? Why didn’t you wait for me?”

“Am I allowed to do something my own way for a change? Is it okay if I leave this place the way I want to?”

“Come on, Sax …”

The anger fell away from her eyes and she closed them for several seconds. She began speaking while they were still closed. “This is all hard enough for me, Thomas. Please don’t make it any harder. Go back to the house and go to work. I’ll be all right. I’ve got my book with me and I can sit in the station and read until the bus comes. Okay? I’ll call you at the end of the week. Okay?”

She gave me a quick smile and reached down for her bag. I didn’t even try to take my hands out of my pockets. She took a couple of crunching steps and then hefted the suitcase for a better grip.

But she didn’t call at the end of the week. I made a point of staying home from Wednesday night on, but she didn’t call. I didn’t know if that was good or bad, nasty or forgetful or what. Since she wasn’t the kind of person who normally forgets to do things like that, I was nervous. In my fantasies I saw her tiredly trudging up the stairs of a dingy building that had a curling brown sign in a downstairs window advertising rooms for rent. She knocked on the door and the mad rapist or butcher-knife murderer welcomed her and invited her in for a cup of tea.

Or else, what was worse was a shiny new building where the landlord was six foot two, ash blond, and sexy as hell. I was hopeless. If I spent the night in our apartment, the bed felt as big and as cold as the ocean. If I spent the night at Anna’s, then I thought about Saxony all the time. Naturally I knew that if Sax was there, my desire for her would have been less and we’d be fighting again, but she wasn’t there and I missed her. I missed her very much.

She called on Tuesday night. She sounded ebullient and excited and was full of news. She knew an old friend from college who used to live in St. Louis. It turned out that he still lived there. She had even found a job working part-time at a children’s day-care center. She had gone to the movies twice and seen the new Robert Altman. Her friend’s name was Geoff Wiggins.

I tried not to swallow my tongue too fast. I smiled sickly at the receiver, half-thinking that it was Saxony. I asked her who this Geoff was. A professor of architecture at Washington University. Was she living … uh … staying with him until she found a place? No, no, that was what was so great — — she didn’t have to look now because Geoff had invited her to stay there with himmmm. .

I got the address and telephone number of old Geoff from her and then tried to finish our conversation with as much cool as possible, but I know that I came across sounding like a cross between Hal the Computer and Woody Woodpecker. When I hung up I felt totally miserable.

I got a letter from one of my students. Seeing the kid’s name on the return address was a shock in itself, but the contents of the damned thing knocked me for a loop.

Dear Mr. Abbey,

How are you? I guess you’re pretty glad to be away from here this year. I don’t know what that feeling is like yet, but I will in June, when, believe it or not, I’ll be graduating. I got into Hobart early decision, so I’m pretty much taking it easy these days. I go over to the Senior House a lot to watch television, and I’ve even been reading some of the books on that list that you gave us last year that you said we’d like.

My favorite so far has been
The Young Lions
(by Irwin Shaw), but I really also liked
The Metamorphosis
(Franz Kafka) and
Look Homeward, Angel
(Thomas Wolfe). I guess talking about books is the best way to tell you why I’m writing this letter. I’ve been here for almost six years now (and you can believe me when I say that they’ve been six long ones!) and I’ve had every teacher in the school at one time or another (or just about). Anyway, I was thinking about it the other day, and I realized that you were the best one. I wasn’t any big “A” student in your class and I know that I fooled around a lot in your class with Romero, but believe it or not, I got more out of that English class last year than any other course I took. Whenever we had a discussion they were always interesting, and I know that more than once I’d read something you had assigned and not really liked it, but after you had finished talking about it in class, I either did like it or at least I understood what the writer was trying to say. You always asked us for examples on our essays to support what we said, so the one I’m thinking about here is when we read
Walden
and most of us thought it was bad, no offense. After you had gone through it, though, I could see what Thoreau was trying to say even though I never did end up liking the whole book.

I have Stevenson this year for Senior English (we’re right in the middle of
King Lear
), and since you’re not here, I guess I’m allowed to say that compared to you, he’s bad news. Half of the time we fall asleep in his class and the other half I spend doodling in my notebook. I know that I doodled in your class too, but I want you to know that I was always listening and that even though I only got C’s from you, it was the best class that I’ve had here, bar none.

I hope that everything is going well for you out there. Maybe you’ll be back in time for graduation and you can laugh when I go up to get my diploma. Ha Ha!

Tom

Rankin

Tom Rankin was one of those boys who look like something out of a jar of eels. Thin and hunched, greasy long hair, rumpled clothes, big thick smudged glasses. I had always known that he wasn’t any dummy, just totally unmotivated. One of those students who are able to skim a book the night before a test and still squeeze out some kind of C or C — .

Another dream-vision of “Abbey’s Future” floated up through my mind: finish the biography and then go back East with Saxony. Teach part-time at some school (maybe even at the old one, after Rankin’s letter!) and write the rest of the time. Buy an old house with bay windows and brass door plates, with room enough for each of us to have separate studies. I don’t know if it was Geoff Wiggins’ doing, but after that phone call, I thought about Saxony a hell of a lot.

“Mrs. Fletcher, has anyone ever left Galen? Any of Marshall’s people?”

She had asked me up to her apartment one night for a cup of organic cocoa, whatever that was. It tasted all right.

“Left? How far have you read in the journals?”

“I’m up to January of nineteen sixty-four.”

“Nineteen sixty-four? Well, there was one girl, Susy Dagenais, but you’ll be reading about her in the nineteen sixty-five book. I can tell you about her anyway if you’d like.”

“Please.”

“Susy Dagenais was a real pistol. She was one of those people that you were asking about before — one of the ones who didn’t want to know her fate? The whole time she lived here she hated being one of us. She said it made her feel like a freak in the circus and that one day she would leave because she didn’t believe where she’d come from. You know all about that, don’t you, Tom? As soon as a child can understand things, their parents tell them who they are and why they’re so special. They don’t tell them anything else until the kid’s eighteen, but some things got to be explained early so that they don’t go do something foolish like run away from home.”