|
|
|
||||
|
Make a Gift to the Arts &
Letters Endowment Arts & Letters Editorial Staff Learn about the MFA Program at GCSU |
|
Self-Made Man
By: Pamela
Gullard |
|
From
the moment Vincent skied off the lift at the top of Whistler, he had the
rising, irrational feeling that this might be the first perfect day of his 52
years. Maybe this would be the day his heart would be full, and no one would
interrupt with their demands. He turned off his cell phone before zipping it
into the inner pocket of his jacket. No ex-girlfriends from years ago could
call with accusations that he’d left too suddenly. Work could wait. The
headlines with their distant rumble of terror could wait. His daughter,
Elizabeth—married for the second time last month—had called yesterday and
said she’d finally found happiness. His son, David, two years younger at 29,
got tenure last fall in the history department of Dawn
had broken a half-hour earlier, but the powder-covered ice field at the
backside of Whistler still held a pink cast. The snow was untouched. Vincent
skated in his skis up the small rise to the top of the run, pushing hard with
his poles, feeling strong. He stopped. To the west, a soaring ridge of
granite cupped the glacier. Vincent shut his eyes, which he did whenever he
saw something beautiful, a habit since childhood. The breeze that tossed ice
crystals off the ridge stung his face. In a flash, as if he were trying to
sear his mind with his last sight, he mentally described the way the powder
sagged in waves against the lower rocks, the pink deepening to blue in the
shadows. Susan,
whom he’d almost forgotten, skied up beside him. He opened his eyes. She
stood silently, drinking in the landscape with the same eagerness he felt, or
so he imagined. She wore a black watch cap, a loose jacket, the sort of
plain, rugged outfit that makes a good-looking woman even more so. She had
her goggles on already, her dark hair lifting off her shoulders in the wind.
So many women endlessly adjusted their bindings, their hair clips, zippers.
He was glad for her company on this long weekend from With a
start, he realized that his joy had a kind of longing to it. He’d walked out
on his wife so many years ago that he could hardly remember the marriage, the
daily scraping of ego against ego. Since then, women had seemed more like a
diversion from a quest he couldn’t quite define, a need to see around some
corner. He had come close to marriage several times, but each time, a
heaviness had invaded his heart. The dread didn’t go away until he was free.
But Susan was different. She said that sometimes she went to “Virgin
territory,” she said with a smile. She had
the broad shoulders and slender hips of an athlete. He had met her at the bar
at Perry’s Restaurant in The bar
stools were full so Vincent stood beside her. He had come in alone for a
quick drink after late hours reading the fine print of a financing deal that
was just about to close. Susan wore a soft violet sweater that curved low
across her shoulder blades. She drank sweet white wine, saying with a laugh
to the engineer that she had a lead palate. She told him that she adored her
sister’s kids, two girls who were five and seven. The engineer left for a
moment to go to the bathroom, stopping on his way to greet friends near the
doorway. Vincent took the chance to smile at Susan and tell her he guessed
she was a musician. Corny, but he wanted to comment on the alert way she sat in
perfect stillness, as if quietly listening to all the sounds in the room. She
smiled back. No, she was a lawyer in a three-woman firm that handled
residential real estate and family law. She was the divorce specialist. She
said she found divorces sad but fascinating, that they distilled people into
their basic elements, whether it was ferocity, or flexibility, or
defeatedness. “Distilled
defeatedness?” he teased, though in fact he liked her seriousness. With
her fingertips, she moved her wine glass on the mahogany bar. Despite what
she claimed about her palate, she drank slowly, savoring each sip. “Some
seem destined to be hurt,” she said with a half-smile. “It’s what they
expected all along. Men especially. You’d be surprised at how many men have
that hang-dog attitude under a lot of bravado.” She
looked at him. He raised his eyebrows. Yet her talk of hurt pierced him. In
her practice, he thought, she saw people in
extremis, losing what they’d once loved, pushing or being wrenched away
from their hopes. His way was better, loving without the grinding habits of
attachment that were apparently so hard to break. “You
don’t expect to be hurt?” he asked her, still with the teasing tone, though
his flirtation seemed stale to him. He wasn’t accustomed, as she was, to
looking at the startling flow of pain and joy behind conversations with
strangers. “Never,”
she said, deadpan. “I don’t believe in getting hurt.” Vincent
got her number, and the next day, he asked her to three one-act plays at the
Magic Theater in That
was four months ago. She had come to The
next trip, however, he impulsively asked her to drive up to On the
mountain, he kissed her cheek, a little astonished at the clean line of her
jaw, her youth. She smelled faintly of melons, as if she’d been in someone’s
garden, not the ski locker in the basement room of the hotel with its
aggressively clean odor of pine. She
lifted her goggles with gloved hands. She had the faintest touch of violet on
her eyelids. The color seemed balanced against blue shadows at the corners of
her eyes. He took a breath. All this seemed to belong to him—the glacier, the
wind, the woman. He
wanted to startle her the way she’d pierced him the night they met. He said,
“My mother was born blind. She never saw anything like this.” Vincent hardly
ever told women about his mother, even when they probed for family facts. He
pretended his grandmother, who raised him in a tract house in east Susan
took this in with the slightest lowering of her head. “She never saw you? How
sad. She didn’t know she had a handsome son.” He
shrugged. “She died when I was a child.” Her sympathy was intoxicating. He
said, “Sometimes I describe things for her, mentally. Funny, I hardly
remember her, but I think of her listening to me.” This, he had never told
anyone. She
nodded and was quiet. Perfect. “You’re a good son,” she said finally. His
heart soared. He rarely thought of himself as a son. Usually his slight,
early memories seemed awkward, inconvenient. The perfect day was unfolding. A
moment passed. “The snow awaits,” he said. She
smiled, a brief acknowledgement of his abruptness. She led the way on a line
to gain speed across the snow field for a cruise from one side to the next.
She skied fast, seemingly without effort, using her knees to start a turn so
that she seemed to float. Vincent closed his eyes on the long stretches. He felt
like he was floating. The loose
snow parted from the tips of his skis. He opened his eyes to take the next
turn. A plume of snow rose behind Susan and caught a prism of light, throwing
a rainbow in the air. Vincent whooped. Susan laughed, the throaty sound
caught in the backwash of air. They
ate blueberry crepes with sour cream at the restaurant at the top of
Blackcomb that was hardly bigger than a warming hut. All around them, skiers
recounted how they’d caught a tip and recovered, or flown off a snowboarder’s
path, or made a record number of runs. Vincent felt as if he’d never been
around so many happy people. It was as if death had been banished from the
mountain. Why was he thinking about death? He reached across the rough table
and touched Susan’s cold-flushed cheek. So smooth. “What?” she said softly. A
burly, bearded man in an orange alpine jacket greedily ate chili beside her. Vincent
wanted to see her quicken with his words. He said, “You ski economically. You
don’t waste movement.” She
smiled. “I thought you were going to say something personal.” He felt
caught out. He’d only given her the tip of what he felt. “I mean,” he said,
“this is the best day of skiing I’ve ever had.” She
smiled, then sobered. “I’m turning thirty-six today. It’s a good birthday.” “You
didn’t tell me.” His last girlfriend seemed to blab about every milestone,
trying to rope people into celebrating all the petty moments of their lives. She
shrugged. “I didn’t want you to feel obligated. But maybe we could raise a
toast tonight. Thirty-six years on this planet.” So. The
day was special for her too. He should have known. Something had illuminated
this morning. At “I
think the nap after skiing is almost as good as sex,” she said. She wore one
of his T-shirts and lay propped on her back against two pillows. Her leg
barely touched his under the sheet. She smiled. “I feel like every muscle is
purring.” She
didn’t lunge at him the way some women did. He wanted to say something
important, something to mark the well-being that swelled from his belly, his
heart. He took her hand under the sheet. “Strange,” he said, “but I’ve been
thinking of my mother. I’ve described the whole day to her. It gives me great
satisfaction.” He couldn’t think of a better word, one large enough to
describe the expansiveness he felt. She considered
this. She didn’t seem to think this talk of mothers strange. “You’re lucky,”
she said, “you have her with you always.” His
throat tightened. What was happening to him? He thought of a boy sitting on
his mother’s lap. Did she touch his face? He couldn’t remember. Susan
sat up a little. There was silence. “I have something to ask you,” she said.
Her wet hair fell on her shoulders. The melon scent was strong. He
turned and ran his hand along her shoulder. If only this day would never end.
If only this sweetness she pulled out of him would never fade. He wanted her,
but not yet. Right now, he wanted to feel the sheet across his arm, her thigh
against his. He wanted to touch her lips with his fingertips. “Anything,” he
said. “I want
you to be the father of my baby.” “What?”
The room had turned dark in the shadow of the mountain. A bulbous lamp stood
on a desk by the over-large TV. “You
have good genes. You’re athletic, sensitive, energetic, and you loved your
mother.” “You
want a baby?” Hollowness invaded his chest. Wet snowflakes appeared past the
window. Had there been clouds? He threw off the sheet. “What would you do
with a baby?” he demanded, feeling foolish, inarticulate. How could she do
this to him? She
lowered her chin, but spoke calmly. “My sister is so happy with her kids.
Sure, they’re a lot of work, but I’ve never seen her so fulfilled. I want
that.” She looked away. “I want someone who needs me no matter what.” He got
out of bed. “This was just a spur-of-the-moment thing? Oh, by the way, my clock
is ticking so why not be my stud fuck?” She
gave him a tremulous smile. She spread her hands on the blanket. “I’ve been
thinking about this all day, all month.” “That’s
what you were thinking about?” He turned on the light. He wore shorts but
felt exposed, his chest bare in the modulated heat of the hotel. The day was
shattered. His
suitcase lay open on a stand by the window. He pulled on a sweatshirt. She
said softly, “I’ve never seen anyone look so mortified.” He
wheeled. How could she sit so still? “Why not a sperm bank?” She
snorted, touched her mouth. “They try to give you personality traits and even
a video of the guy talking about his likes and dislikes, but really it’s just
like a shopping list—” “—You
looked into it?” He was weak with disappointment. He shut his suitcase. She’d
made his hands shake, damn her. She
nodded with a little shrug. “What I
loved about you was that you were carefree.” She sat
regally against the pillows. “Carefree, yes. And thirty-six.” She spoke
quickly. “I’ve liked being with you. I’d like knowing that I kissed the
father of my baby and felt his breath on my face. I’d always have that.” She was
thinking only about the baby. Watching
his face, she spoke even faster. “You wouldn’t have to have anything to do
with the baby. Or me. I could draw up the papers. No strings. I’m not asking
for anything except two million sperm. I’ll take it from there.” Feeling
dogged, clumsy, he said, “You were thinking about this the whole trip.” Not
about being the first ones to lay tracks on the glacier this morning, not
about the hushed feeling on the trail they’d discovered in the late
afternoon, its pines quivering as they swept past. She
shrugged. He couldn’t look at her. He went back to his suitcase and rummaged
for jeans; pulled them on. She had no idea what children were like! Her
nieces were dolls she could give back to her sister whenever she wanted. But
what if those kids wanted something from her.
He said, “Kids will eat you alive.” She
took a breath. “My choice.” He
turned. “I have a boy and a girl. Grown.” She
closed her eyes, opened them. “I know. You told me. David and Elizabeth.” Had he?
His conversations with her seemed jumbled, flashing in and out of his memory.
“When they’re little, they want everything. Everything! All the time.” He
paced the room. The snowflakes dropped past the windows like little bombs. He
had to talk her out of this, not just asking him, but wanting this big, juicy
false answer to puny mornings when
the sun seems weak and for a moment, your sparse bedroom could be a hotel
room, nameless, anchorless. He practically shouted, “My ex-wife took the kids
to She got
up as if she couldn’t stand to be near him. “But you somehow survived,” she
said. She pulled on a white hotel robe so thick she seemed swathed in some
kind of winter animal. She stalked to the window and looked out. Vincent
felt funny on the sheets in his clothes. Misplaced. If only she hadn’t gotten
up. He couldn’t think. He said, “Then they grow up. And one day, they quit
talking. Completely. Not even, ‘Good morning, Dad.’ They’re not at all what
you expected. I remember when He just
couldn’t explain how much he had wished Susan
turned. “She was trying to please you because you were critical of her.” Was he?
“After high school, she married that boy!” “So she
wasn’t so alone.” He
shouted, “Are you telling me I’m wrong about my own daughter?” He’d been
reduced to shouting. She
took a step away from the window. “You have
your story, whatever it is.” There
was silence. Vincent’s mind shifted. He’d been so different from his children
when he was a teenager. How many times had he screamed at his grandmother to
please just leave him alone? Every day, he battled her. He loved her, but
took cash from her purse when she came home from her job cleaning rich
people’s houses in At 18,
he left his grandmother’s house, taking a tiny apartment overlooking Highway
101 in East Palo Alto and working as a janitor’s assistant in grubby offices
of small businesses, car door manufacturers and low-end carpet dealers on His
children didn’t even try to get away from him, or to come close. As teenagers
they hardly left the house when they visited. David grew to be thick-necked
and slightly oafish. Vincent bought him a membership to his gym, but David
never wanted to work out; he sat in the extra room and read. Both kids were
polite, agreeable. Vincent didn’t quite know what to say to them. In their
presence he became jolly and self-deprecating. He told them not to follow in
his footsteps; he’d made a mess of his life. What did he mean by that? The
strangest things slipped out in their silences. He was deeply relieved yet
somehow unsettled when they grew up and their visits, now voluntary, almost
stopped. In the
hotel room, Vincent tried to remember if it was his turn to speak. Susan, at
the window, pulled the robe around her more tightly and yanked at the belt.
“I don’t usually miscalculate this badly,” she said. Her
hair hung around her face. She was so different from the magnificent skier of
the morning. He rose and took her hand. She didn’t look at him, but at the
skiers straggling back to the hotel, walking heavily in ski boots. To
himself, he described exhausted people with open jackets and matted hair
clomping like robots. “A baby will ruin your career,” he said. “I’ve seen it
happen, even though you think it won’t.” He wanted to say so much more, to
sink a dagger in her heart. She
said softly, “Don’t try to tell me what to do.” She turned. “There’s a bus at
six. I’m going to be on it.” The
luxury bus to “You’re
not going to ski tomorrow?” He felt foolish, unprepared, grasping. He didn’t
want to ski alone. The thought seemed ruinous. She’d even invaded his
separate pleasures. She
shook her head and gave a little laugh. She had full, shiny lips. Her eyes
were swimming. “I know you don’t try to be a jerk. You can’t help it. That’s
the part I hoped my baby wouldn’t inherit.” A slow blink. “Well, I guess she
won’t inherit it now.” He
dropped her hand. “You’re calling me
names? The only thing I’m guilty of is taking you to a damn pricey place and
having a good day on the slopes. Here I am just walking down the street, and
all of a sudden you gun me down. No warning.” The
bitterness in her laugh stung him. “What kind of warning could I give? You
spent all day mooning about your mother. Did you ever ask me about my mother? Did you ever want to know
what I was thinking?” She put her hand to her cheek. She winced in a silent
cry. “I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean mooning. I’m just trying to
get back at you. That’s not fair.” He
couldn’t take this all in. The perfect day! His sense that something could
happen with Susan. She’d meant to leave him all along, whether he said yes or
no. Just like that. He said, deadpan, over the crash of his heart, “You have
a mother?” She
gave a little snort. Tears caught in her lashes. She said softly, with a
little smile, “You bastard.” She went to her suitcase on the stand in the
closet. She re-folded two sweaters. He watched her. He couldn’t think of
anything else to do. His throat was thick. His hands felt useless at his
sides. The
snowflakes whirled. He said, “What if I decided later that I wanted rights?” She
glanced up at him. “You don’t want rights. That’s not like you.” Stung,
he said, “How can you be sure I’m so bloodless? Fatherhood can change a guy.” She
turned, surprised. “It didn’t change you.” She took off the robe and pulled
on a sweater over the T-shirt. She lifted out her hair. She was
unselfconscious even though he watched her closely. Her
simple, domestic gesture unloosed something. He said, “It’s true, mostly what
I did for my kids was pay tuition. And now I usually don’t think about them.
Their existence almost surprises me. But then some mornings, usually around
dawn, I’ll get up and I’ll need to see them. Just lay eyes on them. Be sure they’re
OK. I’ll pick up the phone. But it will be three or four in the morning. I
don’t want them to think their father is crazy, so I put the phone back
down.” There
was a pause. “I wouldn’t have pictured that.” He
lifted a brow. “Me either.” He smiled. A sense of defeat crept over him. Finally,
she said, “Actually I don’t want to leave tonight. I’m too ragged. I could go
tomorrow morning.” His
heart swelled. OK. OK. He’d imagined himself alone tonight trudging through
the wet snow to the Italian place on the square. To himself, he described an
almost-old man, fit, unencumbered, his soft boots almost noiseless on the icy
path. This man was 52 and saw 60 on the horizon. Fifty had not been so bad,
but now two years had already passed. He
touched her arm. “And let me at least buy you a glass of wine to make up for
being a jerk.” She
reached up and kissed him. “I was so right and so wrong,” she said. They
did eat at the Italian place, stuffing themselves with soft bread drenched
with olive oil. Then they had shark over spinach, laughing about how the
shark had made its way over the mountains to Whistler. He gave a toast to her
birthday. She said, “Except for our total incompatibility, we’re the perfect
pair.” She put her hand on his on the white tablecloth. Her palm was soft,
her fingers light. He
said, “Tell me about your mother.” She
smiled. “You don’t have to do this.” “I
know. But I want to know about your mother.” To his surprise, he did. Even if
he never saw her again, he didn’t want to leave empty-handed. The fire in the
center of the restaurant crackled under the conversation of the guests. Susan
put her hand to her throat. “My mother was a barracuda. She handled corporate
accounts in a large law firm in downtown “Do you
see your father?” A strange ache rose in Vincent’s chest. Had he ever asked
anyone about their father? Usually he avoided the subject. “Yes,”
she said. “We’ve gotten very close. He retired last year. He lives in Fishing.
With a start, Vincent wondered if his daughter would be having children soon.
If she did, would her kids want to go fishing? When Vincent was young, his
grandmother had taken him to a stocked pond off Highway 101 a few times, but
even as a kid, Vincent had never liked the uncertainty of waiting for a fish.
And all that equipment, lore. In the restaurant, he felt bereft, callow. Susan
said, “You know, you have this habit of drifting off when you’re bored. You
should cover it better.” How
could she say that! “I was thinking about your father.” Her
voice rose. “You were not. You were thinking about some transaction or
other.” “Forget
it,” he said. He didn’t expect to be so stung. She
looked up. She bunched her napkin and put it on the table. “Why do I always
end up fighting? I’m just like my mother. I feel like that’s all I know how
to do.” There
was a pause. OK. He wanted to talk. “My mother died in summer,” he said. “I
don’t know which month. When I’m awake at three in the morning, instead of
bothering my children, I try to put myself back to sleep by thinking of my
grandmother’s house. Mentally, I walk through the house and describe
everything. I try to get it all correct: the green chair sat next to the
window, her table for bills in the back bedroom. Her bedroom, her hairbrush
on its back. I catalogue everything. It makes me feel better.” He paused. Susan
had her hand on the table next to her plate. She didn’t move. If she’d said
one thing, he would have stopped. “The
day my mother died,” he said, “I climbed into my grandmother’s wicker laundry
basket. If I crouched, I just fit. My grandmother looked all over for me. I
could hear her shouting. She went in and out of the house. She was frantic.” The
crowd in the restaurant had thinned out. People going back to their hotels so
they could get up for the good snow of the early morning. Susan said, “I can
see your grandmother, but I can’t see you.” He
smoothed the front of his sweater. He could hardly catch his breath. “I don’t
know. Let’s see. Striped shirt. Belly against my thighs. Fists on my knees.”
He couldn’t go on. She
nodded. She put her hand on his wrist. The bill came and he put a credit card
on it without looking. He said, “You don’t always fight. You never fight.
This was the first time.” She
gave a little snort. “I vowed I’d never fight with a man again.” He
smiled. The
waiter brought their coats. They walked out into the night in silence. At the
hotel, she turned on the TV in the front room and they sat on the couch
watching a stand-up comedian from He kept
the one on the bed that smelled like her. He lay on his back. Hours slipped
by. He got
out of bed. He slid himself down beside her. She smelled like sleep. Her
shoulder was shiny above the blanket. He could give her what she wanted and
then let her go. Barely awake, she put her hand on his chest, to stop him or
as a caress, he wasn’t sure. He didn’t move. Could he let her go? She said,
“I don’t know what to do.” The
moon flashed again. “Your call,” he whispered.
|
|
Arts & Letters Campus (478) 445-1289 al@gcsu.edu |
|
Arts &
Letters
accepts submissions from September 1 to March 1 (postmark deadlines). For complete information, see submission guidelines. |