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  The Marriage Hearse

  A Novel

  Larry Duberstein

  New York

  It is not true that love makes

  all things easy: it makes us

  choose what is difficult.

  —George Eliot

  Love hinders death.

  —Leo Tolstoy

  The Outset

  This story will begin with a simple scene in which a middle-aged man is strolling home after his day at the office and chooses to stop an hour or so at a neighborhood tavern for a glass of ale. But it will not begin quite yet, for that man is myself, Maurice Locksley, and because you no doubt know me through my other books there is something I would take the liberty of saying right at the outset. In fact, it occurs to me now that there are dozens of things I could say right at the outset. How long is an outset, anyway? We might stretch a point and get all our business transacted “right at the outset”.

  But the story, if and when it begins, will cover the time span between 5:00 p.m. on December 19 and 3:39 a.m. on the morning, technically, of December 20. The weather will be “variable” and the locale will shift from the city of Boston to some of its outlying villages and then back again, as we follow that hero of so much modern literature “I” in a ten hour and thirty-nine minute pursuit of himself. Who is “I”? (Who am I?) And who is this “himself” that he is forever pursuing, what makes the fellow flee and hide?

  What I did wish to say right at the outset, however, is that I personally have never liked writing in what is called the first person, by which is meant not Adam but “I”, this same “I” who invariably talks too much and mostly, almost obsessively, about “himself”. You will ransack the ouevre in vain if you are looking to find a story of any substance by Maurice Locksley in the first person, for this is my first, and therefore his. That breadth of address, all those digressions and wry flourishes of the “gentle reader” ilk, such liberties of affectation are just so many soft shoulders along the high road of narrative. And yet I have concluded after much consideration that in this case, that person, the first, is the lesser of evils as there might be even greater affectation in the instance of a writer writing about a writer that is himself, in the third person. Do you not agree?

  So yes, “I” will reluctantly be telling my story and as a direct result you and I must both expect to make certain sacrifices. There will likewise be benefits derived, for already I feel closer to you than I might have and I’ll wager you come to feel the same way if you remain with me to the end. And if you have remained with me at least to the beginning, that moment is now at hand.

  Loose Time

  William Faulkner, himself a writer, once offered some advice on the subject of wives. He said the trick was to keep the first one and simply try to outlast her.

  Good wry words from a pithy small-town man who valued his leisure, his ramblings and his ruminations, his pipe and his bourbon, and above all his work. A man must have his range and be at home on it, and to continually muddy the waters of priority with questions of the heart would surely take much away from the peace and quiet of life. If a man will go strewing sons and lovers, wives and daughters about the map, slicing his time and scattering his money, he may very well find there is little of either left for “himself”.

  I am pondering Faulkner’s advice, and how it bears upon my own situation, as I pace off the seven blocks between my office and my home, at 5:00 p.m. on the already dark afternoon of December 19, 19—. And thus preoccupied I have paid scarcely any notice to the stream of Bostonians flowing past me, or to the dozens of shop windows layed out to entice me, until I happen to glance up just in front of a bar called Bourbon-on-the-Charles and, alternatively, The Sportsman’s Paradise. You see, the place has two names, two signs hung one above the other, over the door. The Bourbon-on-the-Charles sign is higher and larger, while The Sportsman’s Paradise glows out from below in midnight-blue neon, so it really is impossible to choose between them.

  I have gone past this tavern some two thousand times and it would surprise you I am sure the amount of time I have spent on the question of nomenclature. According to my current theory, The Sportsman’s Paradise was here first, a neighborhood fixture, and simply merged some years back with another bar called Bourbon-on-the-Charles that must originally have stood in somewhat greater proximity to the banks of the Charles River, which runs between Boston and Cambridge out to sea. Until two years ago I had held staunchly to a completely different theory, in which the owner could not decide finally between his two favorite names, and so had decided to keep them both. And being an original fellow, he was bothered not at all by the geographical imprecision of one of those names. The place is listed in the phone book, if you were wondering, under neither name.

  Of course I could at any time have ascertained the truth very easily—half of me yearns for that simple explanation even as the other half shrinks from such deflation and would forever revel in theories instead—but in fact I have never set foot inside the bar. Never once, either to research my theories or to slake my palatine desires, though I stroll past it no less than twice a day and have always been drawn to the place. And yet the split-second I glance up at the two signs, and at the large front window which I know for a fact is divided into exactly forty-eight panes of glass, I know also that I will be going inside today.

  Never tempted at 9:00 a.m. when the door is propped ajar and the stools peacefully inhabited by the l’âge d’or set, or after lunch when it shelters the able-bodied unemployed, I had often envied the crowd I saw in there around quitting time, now, the ones who had finished a day’s labor and had some loose time, pub time, in which to unwind before the wending homeward. It is a tradesman’s bar at this hour and clearly houses that stout fellow whose work and whose comrades rate slightly higher than his home and family, mates over mate, for reasons never understood or even explored. But I, Maurice Locksley, am also moving through the portal to lift a glass or two inside and ever the relentless analyst, never content to leave such matters under-examined, I am asking myself why I am here before I fully clear the threshold.

  1) Because it was there. Well this is certainly true, ontology notwithstanding, and yet it cannot be the correct answer because it was also “there” on the two thousand prior occasions.

  2) Because if I did not go in, and went directly home instead, to Kim and gentle Ben, I might then have to resent Kim or Ben, potentially warping the latter (age four) or irking the former (age thirty-seven). Not good to warp the young, not wise to irk the middle-aged; not even sound to resent, for the self itself can warp or crack.

  Here I interrupt my analysis, though by no means ruling out 2) entirely, and make safari through the thick grove of smoke and hearty splashing cheer to the bar. I select a stool (the last one free) and also a tone in which to voice my preference for Bass Ale (strong silent flat western), then settle back into normal voice by way of accepting a domestic mediocrity instead. Rinsing my mouth with said mediocrity I am able to rule out

  3) Because I had conceived a thirst of such magnitude as to permit no further perambulation prior to quenchment: the oasis syndrome. This is not the case. I wanted the element more than the aliment, the glass more than its contents. For one does require the glass in a bar-room. It is the chief prop inanimate but also in subtle ways one socializes with it. Were it not for the glass, one might easily appear lost, or lonely, out of place; with it, always busy and belonging. So I am “in place”, not as it were déglassé, and free to
plunge ahead to a consideration of

  4) Because today is a unique and special day. Now that is good. In fact that might be it, for isn’t this the day I have chosen to tell you about—not three years ago Saturday or Tuesday week, but today—and so it must indeed be special, mustn’t it?

  Though I have never been inside Bourbon-on-the-Charles before, I see much that looks familiar. Many of the neighborhood faces are here, faces I have smiled into and even greeted, yet never known at all, and the mise-en-scène is common enough. Wall decorations incline to the sportsman’s paradise theme: Ted Williams landing a fish, Luis Tiant checking his baserunners, Bobby Orr scoring a goal to win the Stanley Cup. The lighting is pleasant, a shaded amber lantern on the wall by each dark wooden booth, and the bartender has been narrating a suitably worldly anecdote to a crew of carpenters about a remodeling job he once did himself, for the longshoreman’s union in Charleston, South Carolina. (The union had elected to finance the conversion of a café next door to the union hall into a bawdyhouse, and the job had mainly consisted of buying some red light-bulbs and exterminating the rats in the cellar.)

  The carpenters laugh at the story, as does everyone else within earshot. Most of the patrons here are tradespeople, in trios and pairs, sipping at glasses of draught beer. One fellow who came in red-faced and raging, haranguing a lad who is likely both his son and his helper, has grown mellower by the glass till he now seems as sweet and cheerful as a brandywine friar. Another pair sits in absolute stony silence; the tall red-haired one with “Cliff” lettered on his shirt-pocket flap, grins a bit from time to time and every once in a while, for no discernible reason, his whole face flushes brightly and the grin faintly broadens. Then he nods to his buddy, still without speaking, and sips more beer.

  BOURBON-ON-THE-CHARLES

  There are more. Every table contains a vignette, relationships and eccentricities, and I am fascinated by this as always. In the corner by the billiard table, three plumbers share a pitcher of dark beer. One of them relates a tale of vengeance against a late-paying customer, his phrasing in cadence with the click and roll of the billiard balls. “Don’t get mad,” he works his refrain with flawless stand-up style and timing, “Just get even.” His table-mates, much younger men, alternately follow his story and carry forth a separate story of their own, regarding a mutual acquaintance with “huge tits”.

  New clients wedge themselves into the room and though I take passing notice of each, I note one threesome in particular, as was no doubt fated. My curse. The three are painters, got up as painters at any rate, two tall young men and a woman roughly twenty-five, with long black hair and a startling long white body. This is no child, this is an Eligible, someone who will clearly require “elimination” and by this I certainly do not mean what the Mob or Central Intelligence might mean by it, but rather that if this extraordinary person is to be excluded from my life, I must demand to know why, on what basis.

  She has the grace to be wearing her painter’s whites a size large, withal the posterior to make them snug and unwrinkled at the seat. Long muscular legs, presumably on the scheme of her long muscular arms, and a gently bobbing breast-line inside the soft faded cotton work-shirt. It is hard to stop looking at her face: deep green eyes, the curving smile, and rich smooth skin, all played out in a succession of charming expressions for the most acute and discerning audience. This is somebody’s dream girl, most likely one of the two spattered gentlemen currently flanking her. She is sharing a glass with the bearded one and yet he lacks the proprietary air … In fact, ye Gods and little fishes, he is cruising over to the pinball machine, abandoning her there at table!

  No doubt I’ve been staring like a stunned ox, but my mother wit has been busy all the while and now at last I believe I have it. Zap! She is eliminated. You see, I forgot in the sheer excitement of observing her (the writer’s boon and bane) and yet it was right there all along: surfeit. The girl is excellent, intuition tells me her excellence is general. Excellent her hips, excellent her heart, everything about her uniformly excellent—share a plank with her anytime, like to work with m’ hands too y’ know—but then can she be any more excellent than Kim? Than Maggie Cornelius? Than Adele Blaney?

  Though you will not meet these three estimable ladies until a bit later in the evening, you can take it from Locksley they are well-nigh matchless within their species and even allowing Green Eyes a similar status, she is eliminated by simple historical linearity and by the state of surfeit. Satis est. Scratch Green Eyes, then, ease her down from the swaying plank of imagination to restore some balance. And is it not worth a second mug of ale to have done so? But God damn it, Locksley, stop peeking at the clock, for there remains to be considered

  5) Why not go inside? Maybe all we have here is just a leetle break-through in thinking, to look at the problem from the other side evidentially, burden-of-proofishly if you will. And what is the why-not? Well, generally the why-not takes the form of hurry. Hurry hurry. There is this rush, never fully defined but presumed to be part of the condition of Love, a heartfelt or headfelt obligation; rushing to women, rushing to children, they need to have us there.

  So what about these folks here, looking squarely at six bells in Bourbon-on-the-Charles? (Yes, for purposes of narrative simplicity I have chosen between the two names, a feat which the proprietor himself proved unequal to, in my earlier theory.) But do they not suffer from the obligation to rush? Have they simply never incurred it, or do they choose most willfully to ignore it? And in any case, what makes for such a situation, whereby they lay easy claim to this loose time I seem to crave?

  Maybe this is no more than a fly-by-night identity crisis for me, a career crisis really, for writing is after all a lonely trade, others seem so sociable by contrast, and I have been at it a long time. Perhaps I require a change, you check the level and I’ll nail her off sort of change. Even as a child I played alone much of the time and now I have worked alone, all my life. Other lives, other jobs must be more fun. Even office work—all that yakking and flirting and coffee-breaking, betting pools and car pools and sly joking about spousies—well, maybe not office work but surely these others, the macho trades with their skill and pride and strength, pipes and wires and boards, beer and skittles … Why even a crummy piece of sheet-rock might be enough to make a man o’ me!

  Cause I’m forty now, see, and life seems largely gone by—but all of a sudden somehow—it seems chosen and used up, and I must wonder have I chosen well? Have I done the right things, in the right places, with the right people? Was there, for me, choice at all? (Don’t recall making such. M.L.)

  Almost immediately there is light. At once a mild epiphany, and I must remind you that this may be a night brimming with epiphanies large and small, that you must brace your credulity on this particular and special night. But now into our teeming sportsman’s paradise from the dingy street outside come two brand new characters and the two combine to form something else new in our population, a couple. We have just acquired the classical heterosexual couple composed of one man and the abutting woman, he the higher by five inches, the heftier by fifty pounds, her hair the longer by a foot, arm in arm. Standardized model old-line heterosexual pairing, of bland description. What can they want?

  Have they wandered in from the cold solely to remind me that indeed there was once choice, to recall to me that bygone era when birth was still controlled? For yes my darling children, there was such a time, and mom and dad roamed the globe alone, bereft of your sort (to what purpose, you may ask) and therefore unaccountable except possibly to each other. And was that easy? You bet it was. Precisely what it was, in fact, easy as pie. Drifting and dreaming, late aprèsmidi fucking followed by re-run movies followed by cheapo restaurants and bars … The old arm-in-arm era! Was that fun? You bet it was.

  It was 1965, Maurice Locksley, and you were in the prime of life when they tossed that little war in Southeast Asia. Forgotten that one? Best not forget, for that was it, that was your choice—housed within the c
hoices already made for you by others, to be sure, but you did choose. There were other chancier roads open—exile, prison, the underground—but you pre-meditated a birth instead. In 1966 Will was born and you were “deferred”, your death was put back while the deaths of certain others unknown to you personally were hastened forward in time.

  Guilt for this? Not a bit of it, not then, not now. You would have gone to jail, to the bug-house, to Canada or Sweden; you played the game by the rules, too, just like the dead ones and the scarred ones. If you give life, you get life, that was the deal they offered, and so Willie was born. Blonde baby Will, loved then, loved now, and yet the choice (as we must persist in calling it) was tarnish. Tarnish or downright timid, like all your choices, Locksley. Easy ways out. Finished school and wondering where to live? Come to Boston, they won’t bite you there. If you white you all right. Need work? No problem, you already had the one story in Wyler’s, just go from there. How about a wifie? Already got one! Far out.

  So the question why not go inside the tavern or 5) on your scorecard is actually an old question. Why not Wyoming or the cold blue Yukon, why not the great grey-green greasy Limpopo River all set about with fever-trees? Why the easy beaten path? True enough that to be an adventurer, to go “on the road” in our time one must also be something of a poseur, mixing myth with folly. Europe choked with wimpy-burgers, Africa a blight of white office-buildings, outer space a dark cold cave full of flying rocks. But isn’t there another, harder truth here, namely that adventure resides in the soul, that the domestic nester lacks it there. He is different. He is cozy. (Or “cosy” in Great Britain, where the expression has always enjoyed greater resonance.) He is a valid creature, merely different, and all is well with him so long as he loves “himself”. So long as he steers clear of mid-life crisis, for example. For when that happens, he will find out the hard bourgeois truth, he will find there is only the one adventure still open to him, just one within reach—the New Woman Adventure.