The Marriage Hearse Read online

  Well! Seems we were in for a spot of what we in the trade call the interior monologue (in this case the monologue within the monologue) but it’s safely behind us now and I am still hunched at the bar lamenting the narrow tedium of my life, gloryizing the narrow tedium of someone else’s. The arm-in-armers at the window table. Tra la, tra la. They are having the double cheeseburg plate, that’s y. A dinner fit for dukes and derelicts alike, and they are washing it down with the house rosé, a wine fit for weimaraners, that’s y. Because they have no time frame, that is why. Little they care the clock is chanting “Go, go, go Locksley go”, that it’s close onto 6:30 Eastern Standard Time, they don’t even hear it. To them it’s always just three hairs past a freckle, they are on Freckle Standard Time and even the keenest observer (here I bow low) can have no notion what they do, or why, or where.

  I do know that they are acquainted with the three plumbers by the billiard table (very likely a Bourbon-on-the-Charles connection) for they are now passing on the news that a light snow has begun to fall. This flash spreads through the room quickly, like a lighted trail of kerosene, and has an immediate wonderful effect on the total ambience. It is the 19th of December, as I believe I mentioned, but only with this word of snow-fall has it become truly the Christmas season. Magically there are colored lights flickering along the bar, a birch-log fire is blazing away, and carols break out in fits and starts.

  The bartender is telling another story, not far from my perch, but this one I cannot hear over the joyful din. A dozen people do hear him, though, and reward him with the rich rumble of laughter. So many undistinguished faces are lit by a smile, transformed as the dullness of zinc is transformed by copper to the bright polished beauty of brass! And now a round of free drinks is cried and the air is literally humid with promise; anything may happen.

  I rise.

  I am missing Benny’s bath. I have forgotten to pick up a pound of butter, though carefully instructed to do so, and I am late for dinner, and hardly hungry for beer-glut, and in less than two hours I will be out in Concord discussing Will and Sadie’s problems with Adele. I confess to you I don’t even know what Will and Sadie’s problems are, reader, discussing them could be tricky. It is, then, four hairs past the freckle, special day or no special day, and I am gone into the night to take a cold slap from the cold snap, in a leave that beery warmth behind and take it on home sort of departure.

  It may be worth noting, though, that nothing is all bad. I don’t feel bad, for starters, I feel glowy and good and I will not resent Kim or Benny (but oh dear, Kim will resent me) and these spiky little motes of snow pecking at my face are glorious and furthermore I have accomplished something here. I have: taken just a mo and allowed me self to be less dependable upon, played at the jolly freemason. Can a glass of ale en route maison really be the first stop on that thousand-mile glide down to the mouth of the great grey-green greasy Limpopo River where no one is waiting, there is no clock, and ’satiable curtiosity is all one really needs?

  Enough. On the march now, around the thinned-out crowds. Down Bridge Street to Fennel Alley, through Fennel Alley to Franklin Avenue, pick ’em up and lay ’em down, on to Locksley Hall.

  Locksley Hall

  Despite its august appellation, you will not find the Hall addressed much as a subject in studies of Boston’s architecture. Little has been written of the capital, archetrave and cornice, even less of the cornice returns, on four sides ripped loose by wind and dangling by the last eight-penny cut-nail. Nor has enough been said of the fine neocrustacean detail of the frieze, so lovingly echoed on the chair-rail and plinth blocks inside. A neglected treasure of early 20th century urban design, this superb four-story walk-up stands as a monument to wood-frame construction. For in an age of cracking concrete slabs and crashing twisted girders where every day is demonstrated the failure of neoteric design and construction, your four-story wood-frame walk-up continues sturdy and serviceable, and shows forth the attention paid to detail and graceful finish on even the lowest class of dwelling sixty years ago.

  Locksley Hall! Or 228 Franklin, if you prefer. It is more than just a home, it is affordable. Its shortcomings are few and owe less to structural neglect than to the neglect of absentee landlords. Many of my friends have wondered why I choose to reside here at the Hall, for you have by now fully discerned the partial irony—Locksley Hall is a 3½ room flat of the sort that features “revealed plumbing”, not a coldwater flat but lukewarm at times, somewhat beset by rust and grime, a bit of a crush for space if space is what you need, and not really of the best upkeep in regard to plaster or tile.

  We sanded and varnished the floors ourselves, as a concession by the author to his bride and by both of us to the age we live in, and I can admit the effect does set Kim’s hanging gardens off rather nicely. But the rest is merely a pleasant ruin and I have never been able to explain to anyone’s satisfaction why we love it. I never really feel like trying to explain, it seems demeaning to do so. We love it because it is our home, because it is adequate. Because it suits our needs just barely, with absolutely nothing of luxury about it, giving us the satisfaction of knowing we are living according to principles embraced at the age of nineteen, or sophomorically.

  Why would a man of sufficient means and with a modicum of fame, a man of position, and a woman with means enough herself (for although Kim’s poems do not “sell” as such, you might be surprised to learn the number of foundations that these days pride themselves on greasing the palms of Women Who Write)—why would two such people in mens sana reside and even attempt to rear a child in 3.5 grimy rooms four flights above a grimy street, without even the consoling obligatory stink of those two siamese cats whom I must pocket-veto on a biannual basis? Because they like it, that’s y.

  And that’s as far as the explanation ever gets, I’m afraid. It is true that I once lived for two years in a garage with a dirt floor, duck-board and rugs over a dirt floor, and I was extremely, excessively happy there. I may have more to say about my garage life later on this evening but the point is that remarkably little is required to satisfy one’s self, much more is required to fulfill the expectations that others place upon our lives, including those who bloody well ought to know better. I and Kim have in common the gift of separating these two matters, and the ability to front essentials. Also it helps that we pass two months each year at her family’s farm in Pennsylvania with 58 acres and 14 rooms, 10 fireplaces and 4 rolltop desks. Luxury has made penury easier to bear.

  Is there a concern regarding Ben Orenburg Locksley? There is, and yet owing to his youth and smallth it is not a pressing concern. My older son Will, I will wager any sum you care to sign for, is right at this moment (6:42 p.m.) outside in the driveway at his mother’s house, and with the spot-lights blazing down from the porch to the clay and gravel rectangle where he conducts the entire National Basketball Association schedule of the Philadelphia 76ers, game by game by game. Sometimes the Sixers will appear in as many as four different games in a given day, Sixers know no fatigue, and likely they will prevail in all four, even when the opposition is the Lakers in L.A. or the Celtics in Boston. Sixers very tough on the road.

  He’s out there, under the twin spots, playing the part of each performer for each team, shooting the ball in ten different styles and duplicating especially well the individual flair of each man at the foul line. In these games there is realism: the big scorers will score, the rebounders will rebound. Certain coaches will be nailed with a technical, occasionally take a second “T” and get the old heave-ho. But the realism tends to fall away in the fourth quarter. In the fourth quarter the 76ers will always “regroup” and make a charge, the key shots will fall or they will be rebounded (Sixers fierce on the offensive glass when the chips are down) and they will “find a way” to win.

  Sometimes I reason that I owe it to Benny to leave his mother and marry Maggie Cornelius, that I incur a sort of obligation to do as much for him in this regard as I have done for his older half-brother. Get h
im out to the suburbs, get him his driveway by the age of eight, or he’ll never have a real shot at the N.B.A. Benny with his big feet could go 6’4” for all we know, he could be the premier power guard in the league, but not without a driveway.

  Adele thinks Will is sick, of course. That’s probably what tonight’s powwow will be about—too much basketball, too much solitude. She thinks he never got over the divorce, his game is pure compensation, his loneliness not strong but sad. (Hope she’s wrong. M.L.) The first summer I and Kim had Will at the farm he fidgeted every second, drove us batty, till I finally got wise and rigged a hoop on the hickory tree by the big hay barn. The rest of the summer was as smooth as glass. He ate, he talked, he swam. He played card games with Sadie (!), washed the dishes on a volunteer basis, and fidgeted no more.

  Benny will need his driveway—or perhaps he will (they are individuals, dear)—and if I elect to leave Kim for Maggie he will have a better shot at it, though I can see Kim balking at suburban exile. She has always viewed the burbs as a nasty death, death-in-life, never truly yearned to become Poet Laureate of Lexington, or Poetess Laureatess of Lincoln or Leominster. But wait, the schools will frighten her off, you’ll see. Private school is not an option (Kim has her principles) and the public schools around here will scare the piss right out of her with all the angel dust and cocaine and sex at twelve or face a jury of your peers …

  It’s a mad mad mad world, reader, but I feel safe here at Locksley Hall, high above the din. Locksley Hall is home, it has what homes want to have, and Benny says he’s happy. Yesterday as a matter of fact, he said “This is the best day of my life” for the tenth time this month. Kim thinks he just heard it somewhere, but I think he means it, each time.

  Meanwhile I have entered the hall at Locksley Hall, have hung my coat on a peg there, and am headed down to the kitchen to make confession. Kim Orenburg and Ben Orenburg Locksley are both sitting down and I see to my horror that they have waited dinner for me. Surely it will go the worse for that, the two of them sharp with hunger.

  “The butter?” says Kim with a lightly etched grimace. She knows I have forgotten it, she is sure, and I must turn to another sport for my metaphor now: it is a called third strike. I take it right down the middle, drop the bat from my shoulder, and turn toward the dugout. Then suddenly, seeing a chance to at least save face, I turn back to question the umpire’s call.

  “I thought the boy and I would go fer it together. Like a walk down to Cal’s?”

  Ben is in his pajamas already and looks up at me like I’m loco. Kim just starts laughing.

  “That’s awful, Locksley, is it really the best you can come up with?”

  “Well, let’s see …”

  “Can I go, Ma?” That’s Benny. He has mastered the timewarp and is ready now to maneuver within it.

  “Sure,” I answer him. “Just yank your trousers on right over your pajamas, and get your shoes and coat.”

  “Let’s just eat,” says Kim. “We’ll do without the butter at this point. It’s seven o’clock, you know.”

  “But it’s snowing. Benny’ll love the snow. It’s pretty when it’s fresh, so white and all.”

  “Yes, M. We know that.”

  “Can I go, Ma?”

  “After we’ve eaten, boys. You can go fer butter and some dessert, and play in the snow all you like. But you know”—this to me—“you do have a date tonight with A.B. Locksley.”

  “I do know it.”

  As we sit down over our stir-fried chicken with onions and green peppers, warmed over lightly, and while I am weeding the onions and the green peppers and the chicken from Benny’s rice for him, I will inject a word or two on the subject of names. It is Kim’s habit to call everyone by an initial. Thus Benny is B. and I am M. unless she is gently peeved, in which case I am apt to become “Locksley”. My ex-wife Adele is A.B. Locksley, which holds a special irony for Kim in that Adele still keeps my name where Kim herself disdains it. Thus the woman I am married to has not my name, the woman I am not married to has. The rest of the irony is directed toward Adele’s weakness for the strong Saxon blend of our joint name: born Adele Blaney, become at age twenty-one Adele Blaney Locksley, she will remain the latter until remarriage sunders her from it, and remarriage will only be assayed with a man of suitably euphonious appellation.

  Adele, incidentally, calls me neither M. nor Locksley—to her I am “Reese”, she likes that Reese Locksley feeling. To Maggie Cornelius, who has something of a literal bent toward names, I am Maurice, having branded myself forever on the day we met. These labels create expectations, however, and to keep the pressure off just a little, I like to think of myself simply as “Occupant” and I do find that more and more of my mail comes addressed that way.

  “How did it go?” Kim asks me, to prove she is not too peeved, thereby inadvertently proving that she is somewhat peeved. She knows I will complain about anything, given half a chance, so this is really a trap, into which I stroll with both eyes open.

  “Hopeless,” I tell her. “I hate the book.”

  “You liked it yesterday.”

  “I did, didn’t I? Maybe I like the book but hate writing it. It’s just no good me writing in the first person.”

  “You did say that too, day before yesterday,” she agrees, nodding and munching. Ben is unusually quiet, or not unusually; he always beholds in mute amazement whenever I and Kim get started about writing. He listens and gapes but just cannot make any sense of what we are saying. So if he is not now unusually quiet, he must then be “usually” quiet, albeit he is usually not quiet at all!

  “Great novels are never written in the first person,” I assert.

  “So what? You’re not writing a great novel. Though it isn’t true in any case.”

  “Citations?”

  “Call me Ishmael?”

  “Why should I?”

  “Lord Jim, The Great Gatsby, let me think …”

  “Don’t trouble yourself. They don’t count. The narrator isn’t a central character, first person is just a device. You find me one where the protagonist narrates.”

  “Great Expectations, Huckleberry Finn…”

  “I said find me one, not two.”

  “Catcher in the Rye.”

  “Not great. And all those books are narrated by children. The Russians never wrote in the first person, or the English. Thomas Mann never did it.”

  “He did so and so did they, and anyway you aren’t Thomas Mann.”

  “Maybe that’s the problem.”

  “You aren’t a Russian, either. You’re not even English, M.”

  “You say that and it sounds like I’m not even human, you know.”

  “We won’t go into that. Look, why not do something a little different—write your book in the second person.”

  “Shit, ma’am, I don’t even think I could write a sentence in the second person. What the hell is the second person?”

  “It’s how they write advertisements, dear. Like this: You just swung down from the big crane, you’re all fucked-up and thirsty as a snake, and now it’s Miller Time. So you head on down … etcetera. Get it?”

  “Right, right. Second person.”

  I pour Ben a second glass of milk, Kim and myself a second glass of wine, and I muse about the fact that the second person is precisely the voice one employs to delineate a character who is talking to himself in bars. Like me, for instance, not very long ago. The second person, as it happens, is a resource I have resorted to many times, I just forgot its name.

  “Tell me more,” I say. “I think I might like to try it in the fourth person.”

  “Damn that’s good, M., I’m just not sure you ought to be changing persons in mid-stream.”

  “Fifth person, though. Tell me how she reads in the fifth person plural.”

  “Oh God, enough. Go get the dessert now, willya guys?”

  “And the butter!” cries our Benny upon re-entry, for he is far and away the most business-like member of the household
. “And play in the snow.”

  “Good. Let’s make a list of these things so we don’t forget any of them.”

  “I won’t,” he assures me.

  “You know, K.”—I kid her occasionally too, you see—“I’ve decided I’m in the wrong line altogether. I’ve decided to become an electrician.”

  “What, again?”

  “No, the last time it was chimney-sweeping. But I read that all the pretty girls are becoming electricians now. That’s the work for me. Wires!”

  “You been down in the dark sewer all day long running the big cables, and you’re stuck-all-over-shit-and-worms and thirsty as a bat and now it’s Miller Time …”

  Now there are a couple of things that should be said about all this back-and-forth you hear. First of all, I suppose you are thinking, Geez, some pair of garbage-brains these two, eh? And it is true that we live this way, more or less, much of the time, and what’s worse we like it. You see, I didn’t tell you that lurking beneath the surface of my cosmic discontent, as presented in Bourbon-on-the-Charles, there is this great joy. I can’t help it, never been able to help it. Even when I am rock-bottom wretched I am fairly happy, and I can always think of ten or a dozen things I would really love to do, which is the exact opposite of true depression. (Is that a magazine or what, True Depression?) With true depression you can’t think up a single blessed thing you even halfway want to do, you’re paralyzed, and I know about this because I have had small doses of that paralysis too. Not my fair share, just a taste.

  There is more to say, though, in relation to all that verbal silliness I and Kim indulged in at the dinner table. It makes for a small barmy life to be two writers living together, but there are lots of funny possibilities. I don’t mean by this Kim’s old vision of how it would be if John Updike married Joyce Carol Oates—clack clack clack upstairs, clack clack clack downstairs sort of funny—but rather the way we both get perspective, both see the thing that is happening between us and instantly begin making something else out of it. We can’t sustain a fight. Too soon we are parodying the fight itself instead of fighting it, and soon after we are laughing. We even agreed one time to stop at the nastiest moment and each write our own version of how the fray must look to a neutral observer. I laughed at her version, she laughed at mine, and we both changed our minds on the issue; and therefore, unfortunately, had to fight again.