The Toynbee Convector Page 9

  The son refilled his glass. He was beginning to per spire. He wiped his lips and brow with his napkin. “Wait a minute,” he said. “It’ll come to me—”

  “Don’t push, Father, let the boy breathe.”

  “Sure, sure,” said his father. “But we took a lot of trouble to dress up and find time and come here. On top of which—”

  “Father.”

  “No, Alice, let me finish. Son of mine, good boy, that place you got us into is not of the best.”

  “It’s all right,” said his mother.

  “No, it’s not, and you know it” The father picked up a fork and drew a picture of the place on the tablecloth. “It’s too damn small, too far from everywhere. No view. And, the heating, my God, the heating!”

  “Well, it does get cold in the winter,” admitted his mother.

  “Cold, hell. So cold it runs cracks up one side and down the other of all the places out there. Oh, and another thing. I don’t like some of our neighbors.”

  “You never liked neighbors anytime, anywhere, anyhow,” said his mother. “People next door moved out Thank God, you said. New people moved in: Oh, God, you said.”

  “Well, these are the worst, they take the cake. Son, can you do anything about it?”

  “Do?” said the son, and thought my God, they don’t know where they’ve come from, they don’t know where they’ve been for twenty years, they can’t guess why it’s cold—

  “Too hot in summer,” added his father. “Melts you in your shoes. Don’t look at me that way, Mother. Son wants to hear. Hell do something about it, won’t you, son? Find us a new place—”

  “Yes, Dad.”

  “You got a headache, son?”

  “No.” The son opened his eyes, and reached for the bottle. “I’ll look into it I promise.”

  I wonder he thought, has anyone ever moved anyone out of a place like that to another place, all for a view, all for better neighbors? Would the law allow? Where could he take them? Where might they go? North Chicago, maybe? There was a place there on a hill—

  The waiter arrived just then to take their orders.

  “Whatever he’s having.” His mother pointed at the son.

  “Whatever that man over there is eating,” said the father.

  “Hamburger steak,” said the son.

  The waiter went away and came back and they ate quickly. “Is this a speed contest?”

  “Slow down, boy. Whoa.” And suddenly it was all over. Exactly one hour had passed as the son put down his knife and fork and finished his fourth glass of wine. Suddenly his face burst into a smile.

  “I remember!” he cried. “I mean, it’s come back to me. Why I called, why I brought you here!”

  “Well?” said his mother.

  “Spit it out, son,” said his father.

  “I,” said the son.

  “Yes?”

  “Yes, yes?”

  “I,” said the son, “love you.”

  His words pushed his parents back in their seats.

  Their shoulders sagged and they glanced at each other out of the corners of their eyes, quietly, with their heads lowered.

  “Hell, son,” said his father. “We know that.”

  “We love you, too,” said his mother.

  “Yes,” said his father, quietly. “Yes.”

  “But we try not to think about it,” said his mother. “It makes us too unhappy when you don’t call.”

  “Mother!” cried the son, and stopped himself from saying: you’ve forgotten again!”

  Instead, he said: “I’ll call more often.”

  “No need,” said his father.

  “I will, believe me, I will!”

  “Don’t make promises you can’t live up to, is what I say. But now,” said the father, drinking more wine, “son, what else did you want to see us about?”

  “What else?” The son was shocked. Wasn’t it enough he protested his great and enduring love—”Well....” The son slowed. His gaze wandered through the restaurant window to the silent phone booth where he had placed those calls.

  “My children—” he said. “Children!” The old man exploded. “By God, I’d forgot myself. What were they now—?”

  “Daughters, of course,” said the wife, punching her husband’s arm. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “If you don’t know what’s been wrong with me for twenty years, you’ll never know.” The father turned to the son. “Daughters of course. Must be full-grown now. Little tads, last time we saw—”

  “Let son tell us about them,” said the mother.

  “There’s nothing to tell.” The son paused awkwardly. “Hell. Lots. But it doesn’t make sense.”

  “Try us,” said the father. “Sometimes—”

  “Yes?”

  “Sometimes,” the son continued, slowly, eyes down, “I have this feeling my daughters, mind you, my daughters have passed away and you, you’re alive! Does that make any sense?”

  “About as much sense as most families make,” said the father, taking out, cutting, and sucking at a fresh cigar.

  “You always did talk funny, son.”

  “Pa,” said the mother.

  “Well, he did and he does, dammit. Talk funny, that is. But go ahead, talk on, and while you’re at it give me some more wine. Go on.”

  The son poured wine and said, “I can’t figure them out So I’ve got two problems. That’s why I summoned you. Number one, I missed you. Number two, I miss them. There’s a joke for you. How can that be?”

  “On the face of it—” the father began.

  “That’s life,” said the mother, nodding, very wise.

  “That’s all the advice you can give?” cried the son.

  “Sorry, we know you went to a lot of trouble, and the dinner was fine and the wine jim-dandy, but we’re out of practice, boy. We can’t even remember what you were like! So how can we help? We can’t!” The father lit a match and watched it flame around the cigar as he drew fire. “No, son. On top of which, we got another problem here. Hate to mention it. Don’t know how to say it—”

  “What your father means is—”

  “No, let me say it, Alice. I hope you’ll take this in the kindly spirit with which I offer it, boy—”

  “Whatever it is, Dad, I will,” said the son. “God, this is hard.” The father slammed down his

  cigar and finished another glass of wine. “Damn and hell, the fact is, son, the reason why we didn’t see you more often over the years is—” He held his breath, then exploded it: “You were a bore!”

  A bomb had been tossed on the table to explode. Stunned, all three stared at one another.

  “What?” asked the son.

  “I said—”

  “No, no, I heard you,” said the son. “I heard. I bore you.” He tasted the words. They had a strange flavor. “I bore you? My God! I bore you!”

  His face reddened, tears burst from his eyes and he began to roar with laughter, beating the table with his right fist and holding to his aching chest with his left, and then wiping his eyes with a napkin. “I bore you!”

  His mother and father waited for a decent interval before they, in turn, began to snort, whiffle, stop up their breaths, and then let it out in a great proclamation of relief and hilarity.

  “Sorry, son!” cried the father, tears running down about his laughing mouth. “He didn’t really mean—” gasped the mother, rocking back and forth, giggles escaping with each breath.

  “Oh, he did, he did!” shouted the son. “He did!”

  And now everyone in the restaurant was looking up at the merry trio.

  “More wine!” said the father.

  “More wine.”

  And by the time the last bottle of wine was uncorked and poured, the three had settled into a smiling, gasping, beautiful silence. The son lifted his glass in a toast.

  “Here’s to boredom!”

  Which set them all off again, firing guffaws, sucking air, pounding the table, eyes gumme
d shut with happy tears, knocking each other’s ribs with their elbows. “Well, son,” said the father, at last, quieting. “It’s late. We really must be going.”

  “Where?” laughed the son, and grew still. “Oh, yes. I forgot.”

  “Oh, don’t look so down in the mouth,” said his mother. “That place isn’t half as bad as Father makes out.”

  “But,” said the son, quietly, “isn’t it a bit—boring—also?”

  “Not once you get the hang of it. Finish the wine. Here goes.”

  They drank the last of the wine, laughed a bit, shook their heads, then walked to the restaurant door and out into a warm summer night. It was only eight o’clock and a fine wind blew up from the lake, and there was a smell of flowers in the air that made you want to just walk on forever.

  “Let me go part way with you,” offered the son.

  “Oh, that’s not necessary.”

  “We can make it alone, son,” said the father. “It’s better that way.” They stood looking at each other. “Well,” said the son, “it’s been nice.”

  “No, not really. Loving, yes, loving, because we’re family and we love you, son, and you love us. But nice? I don’t know if that fits. Boring, yes, boring, and loving, loving and boring. Good night, son.”

  And they milled around each other and hugged and kissed and wept and then gave one last great hoot of laughter, and there went his parents, along the street under the darkening trees, heading for the meadow place.

  The son stood for a long moment, watching his parents getting smaller and smaller with distance and then he turned, almost without thinking, and stepped into the phone booth, dialed, and got the answering machine.

  “Hello, Helen,” he said, and paused because it was hard to find words, difficult to say. “This is Dad. About that dinner next Thursday? Could we cancel? No special reason. Overwork. I’ll call next week, set a new date. Oh, and could you call Debby and tell her? Love you. ‘Bye.”

  He hung up and looked down the long dark street. Way off there, his parents were just turning in at the iron graveyard gates. They saw him watching, gave him a wave, and were gone.

  Mom. Dad, he thought Helen. Debby. And again: Helen, Debby, Mom, Dad. I bore them. I bore them! I will be damned!

  And then, laughing until the tears rolled out of his eyes he turned and strolled back into the restaurant His laughter made a few people look up from their tables.

  He didn’t mind, because the wine, as he finished it, wasn’t all that bad.

  Lafayette, Farewell

  There was a tap on the door, the bell was not rung, so I knew who it was. The tapping used to happen once a week, but in the past few weeks it came every other day. I shut my eyes, said a prayer, and opened the door.

  Bill Westerleigh was there, looking at me, tears streaming down his cheeks.

  “Is this my house or yours?” he said.

  It was an old joke now. Several times a year he wandered off, an eighty-nine-year-old man, to get lost within a few blocks. He had quit driving years ago because he had wound up thirty miles out of Los Angeles instead of at the center where we were. His best journey nowadays was from next door, where he lived with his wondrously warm and understanding wife, to here, where he tapped, entered, and wept. “Is this your house or mine?” he said, reversing the order.

  “Mi casa es su casa.” I quoted the old Spanish saying.

  “And thank God for that!”

  I led the way to the sherry bottle and glasses in the parlor and poured two glasses while Bill settled in an easy chair across from me. He wiped his eyes and blew his nose on a handkerchief which he then folded neatly and put back in his breast pocket.

  “Here’s to you, buster.” He waved his sherry glass. “The sky is full of ‘em. I hope you come back. If not, well drop a black wreath where we think your crate fell.”

  I drank and was warmed by the drink and then looked a long while at Bill.

  “The Escadrille been buzzing you again?” I asked.

  “Every night, right after midnight Every morning now. And, the last week, noons. I try not to come over. I tried for three days.”

  “I know. I missed you.”

  “Kind of you to say, son. You have a good heart. But I know I’m a pest, when I have my clear moments. Right now I’m clear and I drink your hospitable health.”

  He emptied his glass and I refilled it.

  “You want to talk about it?”

  “You sound just like a psychiatrist friend of mine. Not that I ever went to one, he was just a friend. Great thing about coming over here is it’s free, and sherry to boot.” He eyed his drink pensively. “It’s a terrible thing to be haunted by ghosts.”

  “We all have them. That’s where Shakespeare was so bright. He taught himself, taught us, taught psychiatrists. Don’t do bad, he said, or your ghosts will get you. The old remembrance, the conscience which doth make cowards and scare midnight men, will rise up and cry, Hamlet, remember me, Macbeth, you’re marked, Lady Macbeth, you, tool Richard the Third, beware, we walk the dawn camp at your shoulder and our shrouds are stiff with blood.”

  “God, you talk purty.” Bill shook his head. “Nice living next door to a writer. When I need a dose of poetry, here you are.”

  “I tend to lecture. It bores my friends.”

  “Not me, dear buster, not me. But you’re right. I mean, what we were talking about. Ghosts.” He put his sherry down and then held to the arms of his easy chair, as if it were the edges of a cockpit.

  “I fly all the time now. It’s nineteen eighteen more than it’s nineteen eighty-seven. It’s France more than it’s the U.S. of A. I’m up there with the old Lafayette. I’m on the ground near Paris with Rickenbacker. And there, just as the sun goes down, is the Bed Baron. I’ve had quite a life, haven’t I, Sam?”

  It was his affectionate mode to call me by six or seven assorted names. I loved them all. I nodded.

  “I’m going to do your story someday,” I said. “It’s not every writer whose neighbor was part of the Escadrille and flew and fought against von Bichthofen.”

  “You couldn’t write it, dear Ralph, you wouldn’t know what to say.”

  “I might surprise you.”

  “You might, by God, you might. Did I ever show you the picture of myself and the whole Lafayette Escadrille team lined up by our junky biplane the summer of ‘eighteen?”

  “No,” I lied, ‘let me see.”

  He pulled a small photo from his wallet and tossed it across to me. I had seen it a hundred times but it was a wonder and a delight.

  “That’s me, in the middle left, the short guy with the dumb smile next to Bickenbacker.” Bill reached to point.

  I looked at all the dead men, for most were long dead now, and there was Bill, twenty years old and lark-happy, and all the other young, young, oh, dear God, young men lined up, arms around each other, or one arm down holding helmets and goggles, and behind them a French 7-1 biplane, and beyond, the flat airfield somewhere near the Western front. Sounds of flying came out of the damned picture. They always did, when I held it. And sounds of wind and birds. It was like a miniature TV screen. At any moment I expected the Lafayette Escadrille to burst into action, spin, run, and take off into that absolutely clear and endless sky. At that very moment in time, in the photo, the Red Baron still lived in the clouds; he would be there forever now and never land, which was right and good, for we wanted him to stay there always, that’s how boys and men feel.

  “God, I love showing you things.” Bill broke the spell. “You’re so damned appreciative. I wish I had had you around when I was making films at MGM.”

  That was the other part of William (Bill) Westerleigh.

  From fighting and photographing the Western front half a mile up, he had moved on, when he got back to the States. From the Eastman labs in New York, he had drifted to some flimsy film studios in Chicago, where Gloria Swanson had once starred, to Hollywood and MGM. From MGM he had shipped to Africa to camera-shoot lions an
d the Watusi for King Solomon’s Mines. Around the world’s studios, there was no one he didn’t know or who didn’t know him. He had been principal cameraman on some two hundred films, and there were two bright gold Academy Oscars on his mantel next door.

  “I’m sorry I grew up so long after you,” I said. “Where’s that photo of you and Rickenbacker alone? And the one signed by von Richthofen.”

  “You don’t want to see them, buster.”

  “Lake hell I don’t!”

  He unfolded his wallet and gently held out the picture of the two of them, himself and Captain Eddie, and the single snap of von Richthofen in full uniform, and signed in ink below.

  “All gone,” said Bill. “Most of’em. Just one or two, and me left. And it won’t be long”—he paused—”before there’s not even me.”

  And suddenly again, the tears began to come out of his eyes and roll down and off his nose.

  I refilled his glass.

  He drank it and said:

  “The thing is, I’m not afraid of dying. I’m just afraid of dying and going to hell!”

  “You’re not going there, Bill,” I said. “Yes, I am!” he cried out, almost indignantly, eyes

  blazing, tears streaming around his gulping mouth. “For what I did, what I can never be forgiven for!”

  I waited a moment. “What was that, Bill?” I asked quietly. “All those young boys I killed, all those young men I destroyed, all those beautiful people I murdered.”

  “You never did that, Bill,” I said.

  “Yes! I did! In the sky, dammit, in the air over France, over Germany, so long ago, but Jesus, there they are every night now, alive again, flying, waving, yelling, laughing like boys, until I fire my guns between the propellers and their wings catch fire and spin down. Sometimes they wave to me, okay! as they fell. Sometimes they curse. But, Jesus, every night, every morning now, the last month, they never leave. Oh, those beautiful boys, those lovely young men, those fine faces, the great shining and loving eyes, and down they go. And I did it And I’ll burn in hell for it!”